


Just Friends With Benefits

by Ladroitte



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fluff, Friends With Benefits, Reveal, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-07-20 06:21:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 68,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16131455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladroitte/pseuds/Ladroitte
Summary: When Adrien sees Marinette cuddle with a stray cat, he's instantly reminded of Ladybug.When Marinette sees Adrien strike a confident pose on the runway, she's instantly reminded of Chat Noir.And since the silly cat and the clumsy girl both know their crush won't ever notice them, they decide to make a deal.





	1. Glitter

The day that Adrien realised the connection between his sweet and clumsy classmate and his strong and brave partner in crime fighting started out as a day like any other.

It was the first relatively warm day of Spring, and Adrien, Nino, Alya and Marinette decided to make the most of it by bringing their school lunch outside. Alya had even had enough foresight to bring a blanket to school, so when the bell rang, they all steered their way towards the nearest park with lunch bags in their hands. The blanket was tiny, forcing the four of them to practically sit in each other’s laps; a fact which made Marinette even more flustered than usual.

‘Oh, uh, I—I’m sorry,’ she stammered, jerking to the side when her thigh inadvertently touched his knee. Adrien, who didn’t want her to feel bad, tried to reassure her with a warm smile, but it just seemed to make her blush more. He sighed inwards.

 _Three years of friendship, and she still acts like I’m made of glass,_ he thought to himself as he took a bite out of his sandwich. While he ate, he watched Alya lean in to whisper something in Marinette’s ear which made the latter choke on her drink and smack the former on the thigh. _No problem with touch there at all._

It wasn’t like Marinette _had_ to touch him or anything. It was just that it would’ve been nice not to feel her tense up every time their arms brushed against each other when they were next to each other, or to see her flinch whenever their fingers touched when she handed something to him. He could understand that she was comfortable with being close to Alya, because Alya was… well, Alya. But even with Nino, she was a lot more relaxed than she had ever been with Adrien.

He’d like to say that he hadn’t given up on the possibility that someday Marinette might be able to relax around him, but it was hard, especially because he had no idea why she acted that way with him. He’d long since concluded that it wasn’t out of dislike, because she did seem to enjoy his company (even though she preferred to be at a comfortable distance from him), but he was getting frustrated not knowing the whole truth. Did she consider him fragile in some way? Was she afraid of him? Or was she just being extremely respectful?

_But why would she just act this way with me and not the others?_

‘Hey, Nino, you’ve got some bread crumbs in your moustache.’

Nino blinked at Marinette. ‘I do? Where?’

‘There!’ she said, pointing. ‘No, hang on.’

Adrien watched dumb-struck as she leaned forward and _plucked_ the bread crumbs right out from under his nose without even flinching. She even _giggled_ a little when Nino had to turn his head away to sneeze afterwards.

‘All gone,’ Marinette promised and sat back in her place as if nothing had happened. As if she hadn’t just been digging her fingertips into the moustache of her best friend’s boyfriend.

It felt infinitely unfair.

‘Hey, lover boy.’

Adrien calmly turned his head to look at Alya. The pet name she had given him wasn’t new by any means, but she still grinned smugly each time she used it, like she was silently congratulating herself for coming up with such a great name for him. The fact that Adrien didn’t understand what was so great about it only seemed to amuse her more.

‘Hm?’ he asked lazily, peering at his female friend in the strong sunlight.

‘Still not joining us tonight?’

He sighed, and it was as much in exhaustion as it was in disappointment. ‘I really can’t. Father would kill me.’

Gabriel had been preparing for that night’s fashion show for months, and Adrien was supposed to be its star. Dressed in a creation that could only be described as “blingy”—with thousands of small crystals buried in his hair, fastened to his skin and dangling from his coat—he would stroll down the catwalk to deep, pulsating music while glitter and tiny confetti exploded all around him. Yeah, his father had always been a sucker for flamboyance. All bark.

Alya swiped an index finger in her jar of Nutella and brought it to her lips, earning a pained groan from Nino as she started sucking on her fingertip. ‘That’s too bad. We’re getting Mari drunk tonight.’

Adrien glanced at Marinette just as she spat out her mouthful of juice, the liquid just narrowly missing his arm. Her cheeks reddened. ‘I—wha—?’ she tried, but was too interrupted by her own coughs to speak.

‘That doesn’t mean we won’t watch the show on TV, though,’ Alya promised while dunking Marinette on the back. ‘Right, Mari?’

‘S-sure,’ the girl said, nodding ferociously. ‘I love fashion!’

All three of her friends stared at her in silence.

‘Ya girl, we know,’ Alya said. ‘Especially _Agreste_ fashion.’

‘Oh shut up,’ Marinette murmured, playfully slapping Alya’s shoulder.

‘Look!’ Nino exclaimed, effectively changing the subject before Adrien could ask, _“You do?”_ He pointed at something behind Marinette, who turned around to see what he was talking about. Immediately, she let out a squeak.

‘Aww!’

Before Adrien knew what was happening, Marinette was holding up a slim, black cat in front of her face, eyes wide and lips pulled into the most content smile he’d seen on the girl’s face. He watched as the cat tried to lazily punch her in the face with its right paw, and as she giggled in response before leaning in to plant a kiss on its nose.

‘I didn’t know you liked cats,’ Adrien commented with a careful smile.

‘Oh, cats are the best,’ she assured him as she brought the creature close to her chest, closing her eyes when it started purring. ‘At least _this_ type of cat.’

‘What do you mean, “this” type of cat?’ Alya questioned. ‘You’re some kind of cat guru now?’

Marinette shook her head, cuddling the cat closer to her. ‘Hush, Alya.’

Adrien found his smile growing as he watched the two of them. She looked so content, so relaxed, so happy, so—

‘Oh kitty, I love you!’

_—so…_

‘You’re so nice to hug, kitty-cat…’

_so…?_

The cat meowed, and the gleeful smile that blossomed up in Marinette’s face accentuated her deep blue eyes in a way that made her just _gleam._

Adrien found himself staring openly. Without blinking. Without being able to tear his eyes away from that face, which looked so… so…

_So much like Ladybug’s._

‘Helloooo, Césaire calling Agreste? Have you never seen a cat before?’

_How have I never realised this before? How could I have been so blind?_

‘Dude. Dude!’

_How have I never realised before… that Marinette looks so similar to Ladybug?_

‘Lover boy!’

Just like that, he snapped out of his trance, reluctantly turning his head away from the miraculous sight that was Marinette confessing her love to a stray cat.

Alya was looking at him like he’d just opened his mouth and turned himself inside out. Not that he could blame her; that’s about how he felt, too. He almost glanced down to check whether his innards were splayed out on the ground in front of him.

‘It’s just a cat, bro,’ Nino pointed out, but Alya hushed him. She narrowed her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. Adrien nervously brought his hand to the back of his neck.

‘Um, I… I just thought it looked dangerous, and… I—I didn’t want Mari to get bitten o-or something.’

‘This sweet little kitty?’ Marinette exclaimed. ‘As if!’

Slowly, he turned to look at her again. His heart jumped in his chest. Now that he’d seen it, he wasn’t sure he could ever _un_ see it. _God damn it, Agreste, get a grip. Marinette’s not Ladybug, she just looks like her…_

He watched her hug and pet the cat some more before setting it down on the ground beside her. Her lips were pulled into a satisfied grin, her eyes glowing in a colour as blue as the sky. And when she suddenly looked his way, he could see no trace of her usual shy self. It wasn’t just her eyes that were glowing. Her entire being was glowing.

_She just looks like her… a lot._

At the sudden feeling of being watched, Adrien glanced to his side and saw that Alya was still studying him. He swallowed. Thankfully, Nino saved him in an instant.

‘So, Alya, are you… like… done with that Nutella jar?’

Alya snorted, tearing her eyes away from Adrien’s face to snatch the jar from her boyfriend’s eager hands. ‘You wish.’ But instead of digging another finger into the chocolatey goodness inside, she immediately handed it to Marinette. ‘Here, Mari. Have some Nutella.’

Marinette blinked down at the jar that was now being held less than a decimetre below her nose. ‘Uhh… But there’s no spoon.’

‘Yeah.’ A grin grew on Alya’s face. ‘Use your finger.’

The other girl stared down into the jar for another moment. Then she shrugged.

Adrien couldn’t tear his eyes away from the dark-haired girl in front of him, which was why it was so _incredibly unfair_ when she reached into the jar, swiped up some Nutella on her fingertip… and brought it up to her lips to suck the substance off.

The confused boy was in no way prepared for the feral reaction that seemingly insignificant gesture would have on him. Suddenly, he was all coughs, his cheeks _burning_ and his head swimming from loss of blood.

_What the hell what the hell what the hELL—_

‘Something wrong, Adrien?’ Alya asked sweetly.

He looked at her smug face, unable to answer. When the coughs ended, he realised his forehead was covered in sweat.

‘I’m f-fine,’ he finally managed to say. Out of the corner of one eye, he could see Marinette look at him. He didn’t dare to look back.

 

* * *

 

 

‘It’s too bad Adrien couldn’t join us,’ Alya said as she plopped down in the sofa next to Marinette, holding three glasses of white wine. She handed one glass to Nino and the other to Marinette, who received it gingerly, watching tiny bubbles sizzle up to the surface of the clear, gold-tinted liquid.

‘Yeah,’ she sighed. ‘Though he was acting really weird today.’

Alya snorted. ‘Pretty much like you act around him all the time.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

The bold girl leaned in closer, a smile growing on her lips. ‘It means the old Dupain-Cheng charm seems to be catching up to the boy,’ she crooned.

Marinette felt her cheeks heat up. ‘W-wha? No way!’

‘Yes way!’ Alya leaned back and extended an arm behind Marinette’s back to be able to reach Nino’s shoulder with her fingers. ‘Don’t you think so, Nino?’

Nino, who had been busy trying to figure out why the remote control wasn’t working, raised an eyebrow but didn’t turn their way. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he muttered. ‘Don’t you usually tell me I’m the most oblivious person you know?’

Alya sighed heavily. ‘Third most oblivious person I know, actually. No one beats Marinette and Adrien at that game.’

‘Hey, that’s not true,’ Marinette complained.

‘Sorry, Nette, but I can’t disagree on that one,’ Nino said with a shrug.

Alya snickered. ‘See? Even number three agrees.’

‘Drink your damn wine, woman,’ Marinette muttered.

‘I will! As soon as the boyfriend gets that remote working. What’s wrong?’

The boyfriend let out a growl in frustration and handed Alya the remote. ‘You tell me!’

‘Have you checked the batteries?’

‘Of course I have!’

‘And you’re sure it’s the right remote?’

Nino opened his mouth to reply, then promptly closed it again. ‘Uhh…’

‘Here, try this one instead.’ Alya dug out a remote from the basket beneath the coffee table and dropped it in Nino’s lap with a wink. His cheeks reddened.

‘Thanks,’ he muttered.

Marinette quietly sipped her wine while Nino manoeuvred over to the right channel. When at last he found it, the show had already started, and music blared out of the cheap loudspeakers of the TV.

‘Ooooh, I’m so excited,’ Alya exclaimed, elbowing Marinette in the side. ‘I can’t wait to see you drool over Mr. Agreste.’

Nino gave her a weird look. ‘Alya, eww. He’s way too old for Nette.’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh my god, I was talking about Adrien, _obviously._ ’

Marinette barely heard their squabble—she was already sucked in by the show in front of her. No Adrien in sight yet, but the room currently showing on the screen was pulsating in black and white as some of the best, most synchronised dancers in France moved on the catwalk. She wondered what it would be like to stand in wait behind the scenes, among the very finest of supermodels, dressed in the absolute highest fashion, ready to walk out into a sea of camera flashes… And she wondered if Adrien was nervous.

She’d never seen him on a catwalk before; all she’d seen were pictures taken for commercials or for new lines of clothing from Agreste Fashion. She tried to imagine the blond boy on the catwalk on the screen, but it was almost impossible. He was the sweetest, most caring, softest boy she’d ever met—could he pull off something as bold as a fashion show?

It wasn’t his first time, she knew that, but it was the first time he’d do it live on TV. And while part of her was almost embarrassingly excited to see him, another part was excruciatingly nervous.

‘Want more wine, Mariii~?’

Marinette turned to see her best friend wiggling her eyebrows. She glanced down at the glass in her lap. Empty.

‘Oh,’ she said, matter-of-factly. ‘Yeah, sure.’ _Pretty sure I’m gonna need it…_

Eager to please, Alya poured her a second glass. ‘Bottom’s up.’

The first part of the show flew past in a hurry. After a few more sips of wine, Marinette’s brain had loosened up enough that she didn’t mind blabbering wildly about each little thing the models wore and how great the designs were and how perfect the seams looked.

In fact, she was so taken by the sheer perfection of the show that she didn’t even notice him at first.

‘There! There he is!’ Alya exclaimed, and in an instant, Marinette’s gaze zipped over to the entrance at the back of the runway.

She almost didn’t recognise him at first. Sure, the model just entering the stage was blond with green eyes, but that’s about where the similarities stopped.

He was dressed completely in white, and he absolutely _gleamed_. His modern cut of a frock coat had tiny diamonds fastened to its collar, cuffs and pockets, and in the back, it transitioned almost seamlessly into a tail of just as tiny crystals that swayed as he walked. In line with the theme, a path of glitter trailed its way along his jawline, out onto his cheekbones, and then back in to end all the way up by his temples. His lips were painted with glittering white lipstick, his eyes outlined with bold, white outliner; even his hair was decorated with small diamonds that glittered in the light.

The coat, which was tied closed with a white belt, accentuated his waist and broad shoulders, and even though it ended just above his knees, it worked perfectly together with his slim, white trousers to show just how long his legs were.

And as if the outfit hadn’t done enough to show just how yearn-worthy the boy was, the fact that he _moved like a literal god on earth_ hammered it home pretty hard. He looked like he was born on the runway, like he lived on it, thrived on it, like he owned it, and like everyone else before him had only been wannabes. He walked with such a purpose and confidence that Marinette found herself literally drooling into her empty glass as she watched his steady steps.

She wasn’t even sure she would describe him as a _boy_ anymore. The model currently walking down the runway was clearly a _man_ , and he was _devastatingly_ sexy.

And of course it didn’t end there. Of course it didn’t.

Because when he reached the end of the runway, he stopped, opened his belt, flung up his coat and struck a pose that she could only describe as a “I have never been more comfortable in my body than I am right now”-pose: hips forward, shoulders back, one hand on his waist.

And then he had the audacity to _smirk._

Marinette almost choked on her own spit.

Alya burst into a cackle. ‘Oh my god, girl! Are your ovaries okay?’

But the problem wasn’t with her ovaries. The problem was something else entirely.

 _That smirk,_ she thought to herself as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, _and that confidence._ It made him look so… so…

_So much like Chat Noir._

‘Mariii~’

_How have I never realised this before? How could I have been so blind?_

‘More wine, Mari?’

_How have I never realised before… that Adrien looks so similar to Chat Noir?_

‘Mari!’

Just like that, she snapped out of her trance, reluctantly turning her head away from the miraculous sight that was Adrien posing like a certain stray cat she knew.

‘Uh-um, yeah, wine, good, that i-is g-g—’ Marinette gulped, unable to catch her thoughts.

‘Damn, girl,’ Alya said slowly, peering at her lost friend. ‘Maybe you should have a glass of water instead?’

‘I’ll go fetch one,’ Nino offered, leaping up from the sofa and hurrying out of the room.

Alya started rubbing Marinette’s back. ‘It’s fine, Mari, I know he’s handsome, but he’s just our little Adrien. Right?’

‘Right,’ she mumbled back.

Slowly, she turned to look at him again. Her heart jumped in her chest. Now that she’d seen it, she wasn’t sure she could ever _un_ see it. _God damn it, Dupain-Cheng, get a grip. Adrien’s not Chat Noir, he just looks like him…_

She watched him saunter off the runway—now holding his frock coat with one finger over his shoulder—but just before he disappeared out of view, he turned to look straight into the camera with fiercely glowing eyes. And she could see no trace of his usual modest self. It wasn’t just his eyes that were glowing; his entire being was glowing.

_He just looks like him… a lot._

When Nino returned with a glass of water, Marinette politely pushed it away. ‘Later,’ she said decisively. ‘Right now, I need something much stronger.’


	2. The Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... in which one character falls figuratively while another does it literally.

Adrien peeked out behind the door to his dressing room. A few heads turned to see what was going on, and when they saw who he was, fake smiles were plastered on their lips.

‘Adrien!’ one of them exclaimed; a tall, slender girl with a glass of champagne in one hand.

‘Hi,’ he replied with a faint smile. ‘Sorry, I, um, don’t have any socks on.’

He just had the time to see the girl’s smile fade as her confusion rose before he tucked his head inside again and closed and locked the door. With a sigh, he leaned his back against it.

_No way I’m getting out that way…_

His gaze was drawn to the windows. He might have been on the third floor, but that was nothing to Chat Noir.

Adrien fetched his phone from the dressing table and brought up the very lacklustre text message conversation with his father.

**_> Not feeling so well. Going home early.  <_ **

While waiting for the reply, he rummaged in his bag for his stack of cheese. Victoriously, he raised the Camembert up in the air and waved it around slowly.

‘Oh, Plaaagg~~’

In the blink of an eye, the tiny black cat kwami was floating next to the Camembert, mouth agape and ready to devour. Like lightning, Adrien withdrew the cheese, hiding it beneath his robe. Plagg gave him a murderous look.

‘Oh you cheeky little…!’

‘Don’t you mean _cheesy?_ ’ Adrien asked with a smirk.

‘Go to hell.’

Adrien cocked his head to the side. ‘I promise you I’ll give you all the cheese you can eat as soon as we get home. I just need some help to get there.’

The kwami floated in the air for a moment, considering. ‘I don’t think you have that much cheese.’

‘Okay, you’ll get all the cheese I have tonight, then I’ll buy more tomorrow.’

‘I want half of that delicious Camembert that you’re hiding _before_ we transform.’

‘We have a deal,’ Adrien said, splitting the cheese in two and handing one of the parts to Plagg, who threw the whole thing straight into his gob. The boy frowned.

‘Ever heard of modesty?’

‘Just becausche _you_ barely eat, it doeschn’t mean _I_ have to abschtain, too,’ Plagg replied through a mouthful of Camembert.

Adrien was about to reply something sarcastic, but a vibration in his pocket called his attention elsewhere. He fished his phone out and looked at its screen.

**> Call Natalie. I don’t want you walking home.  <**

With a relieved exhalation, he typed out a quick reply.

**_> I will. See you tomorrow.  <_ **

Adrien lifted his gaze just in time to see his kwami finish the cheese with one last big gulp. ‘You ready?’

‘Whatever,’ he sighed.

‘Plagg,’ Adrien began, raising his ringed hand beside his head, ‘claws out!’

A welcome warmth enveloped him in the cool dressing room, and before he knew it, he was dressed in snug black leather from finger to toe. He glanced in the mirror above the table as he walked past it. No surprises there; just a masked superhero that was more than familiar enough by now.

It took some force to open the window; it didn’t seem like it had been opened in a long time. But it was no problem for Chat Noir. One hard shove, and it flew open so fast it hit the outside wall with a crack. Adrien winced, but the glass pane seemed to have survived the hit. He steered his gaze out into the night, taking a deep breath when a fresh breeze entered the room.

His suit kept the cold out as he traversed the rooftops on his way home. Since it was late Spring, it wasn’t exactly dark out, but he still thanked his transformation for the ease with which he could discern each little edge, each little loose stone on each rooftop. It didn’t matter whether he looked down or up or straight forward towards the horizon; his sight was crystal clear no matter what.

Which was why he had no trouble recognising the shape a couple of rooftops away of a girl leaning way too far over the railing on her balcony.

A dark-haired girl.

With pigtails.

 

* * *

 

Marinette wiggled her naked toes in the night. She wished she could have said that it made her feel free, but it only made her feel more stuck where she was.

The night had been great. Lots of snacks, wine… and angst. Lots of ogling one of her best friends. Lots of drinking way too much alcohol in an attempt to lighten her own mood.

God damn it, why did she have to fall for the hottest, most amazingly kind and gentlemanly guy in all of Paris?

All that alcohol only made her more melancholic.

_No, scratch that._

The alcohol did much more than just make her melancholic. It made her feel things she shouldn’t feel, made her want things she shouldn’t want, and she probably should just go lie down in bed again but _she just wanted to transform and go find—_

‘Good evening.’

Marinette jumped, and as she did, her hands slipped, and as her hands slipped, she lost her footing, and as she lost her footing—

She fell.

It could have lasted a second or it could have lasted an entire lifetime, because Marinette could have sworn she saw every little mistake she had ever made play back in front of her eyes, but still, she barely had time to blink before the fall was broken by two strong arms.

Confused and dizzy, she looked up.

And she saw the greenest eyes she had ever seen.

‘Chat,’ she breathed, amazed by how good his hands felt around her shoulder and knee.

Her secret partner furrowed his forehead. ‘You should be more careful, princess.’

She leaned her head against his chest and felt him tense, but only for a second before his muscles relaxed again and she only heard his steady heartbeat.

‘I’m sorry,’ she sighed, only partly truthful. ‘Thanks.’

‘Is everything okay?’ he asked as he used his baton to push them back up on her balcony.

She took a deep breath. _I can’t let Chat Noir see me all pathetic and drunk._ ‘Yeah! I’m just top-tip!’

She half-expected him to smirk the Chat Noir Smirk™, but instead, the cat gave her a faint smile. Her heart skipped a beat. _Stop smiling like that what are you doing you’re not supposed to look s h y—_

‘Just try not to jump again… okay?’

His intense green eyes were like two (green) moons above her. Dumb-struck, she just nodded.

Apparently satisfied with that gesture, Chat carefully set her down on the floor of the balcony, but when her legs wobbled, his arms wrapped around her shoulders again.

‘Marinette…’

In an instant, her head cleared. She couldn’t recall him ever having called her by her name before. And the way that he said it now… He made it sound so… _tender._ He made her name sound like the softest, most intimate thing she had ever heard, and he didn’t stop at that. No, he _had_ to go and say it in a low, dreamy half-whisper that, when she closed her eyes, almost tricked her brain into believing that the boy behind the voice was—

‘Adrien,’ she murmured back with a sigh. The boy tensed.

‘What was that?’

‘A—a dream,’ she hurried to correct herself, eyes flying open again. ‘This feels like a dream.’

His gaze softened. He raised one hand as if to stroke a loose sling of hair behind her ear, but seemed to change his mind in the last second, instead letting his hand fall to rest on her shoulder. It was warm. The entire him was warm. She just wanted to cuddle into him, maybe tuck her head beneath his chin as he held her in his arms… ‘Maybe you should go to bed?’

The noise she made at that suggestion wasn’t something she would have ever let out in a sober state. It was a mixture of displeasure and anger, but with her muscles so loose, it came out more like a grumpy moan. With a hint of satisfaction, she noticed a red tint colouring Chat’s cheeks.

‘Um, you don’t… want to do that…?’

She was about to violently shake her head like a stubborn child, but then she came up with a better idea. Straightening out in his arms and placing both palms on his chest, she bent her neck to look up into his eyes—which were currently at least _twice_ the size of the moon. Eyes hooded, lips slightly parted, she curved her fingers into the leather of his suit.

‘I’d rather stay with you,’ she whispered.

The sharp inhalation he made did nothing to dampen her excitement. Before he could collect himself enough to reply, she brought up an index finger and gently pressed it against his lips. Then she stood on tip-toe so that she could reach his mouth with hers, stopping just before her lips grazed her own finger.

‘Your lips are _so_ soft,’ she whispered, and his resulting huff of breath smelled like lipstick with a tiny hint of alcohol. She was too heady to process what that meant.

By now, Chat’s brain finally seemed to have caught up with what was going on, but instead of keeping it up, he disappointed her by grabbing hold of her wrists and backing away to build a safe distance between them.

‘You’re drunk,’ he noted cleverly before clearing his throat. ‘I’ll just help you get down to your room and—’

‘Get in bed with me?’ she suggested, suppressing a giggle.

‘N-no!’ His cheeks were fully red now. Like ripe tomatoes. ‘I mean…’ He took a deep breath that made his chest move in an all-together enthralling way. ‘You need to sleep this off. Alone,’ he added when she parted her lips to answer. A giggle slipped out before she could stop herself.

‘Do you think you can walk on your own?’ he asked.

Insulted by the very suggestion, Marinette tore out of his grip and started towards the hatch that led to her bedroom. _This will show him,_ she thought, and then she promptly stumbled over her own feet.

He was there in an instant, catching her before her face slammed into the floor. ‘May I?’ he asked. She nodded in embarrassment.

Just like that, he scooped her up in his arms, and a few seconds later, he let her down again, this time into her bed. She might be extremely disappointed, but she also noticed that the bed was the most comfortable it had ever been. Letting out a sigh of content, she tried to slip underneath the covers but only managed to push everything down to her knees.

‘You have a lot of pictures of Adrien Agreste,’ Chat remarked while pulling up the covers to her chin. Marinette was too drunk to care.

‘Who doesn’t?’ she mumbled against the soft fabric. ‘He’s smoking hot.’

If she’d had her eyes opened, she might have seen him flinch.

‘Y-yeah? I, uh, thought the two of you were friends.’

She sighed deeply. ‘Tell me about it.’

There was a moment of silence. Marinette didn’t realise she had fallen asleep until she was awakened by Chat’s voice stating, ‘There’s a glass of water on your bedside table. Call me if you need anything.’

‘I don’t have your number,’ she murmured sleepily.

‘Oh, uh… right.’

‘You can add it?’

‘I could, and I would, it’s just that I, uh, don’t know my number by heart. Next time?’

Slowly, Marinette opened her eyes just in time to see Chat Noir freeze.

‘I’m not saying there will be a next time!’ he exclaimed. ‘But if there is, I’ll definitely know my number by then! Because that’s how long it’ll be! Until you drink too much again! Uh, I’m not saying you can’t drink responsibly—’

‘Chat,’ she whispered, a small smile tugging at her lips. That silenced him. ‘Are you sure you don’t want to slip in bed with me?’

He blinked. ‘Yes. I’m sure. Um… Good night, p-princess.’

Three seconds later, she was alone again.

Of course, she fell asleep after two.

 

* * *

 

 

‘I’m so stupid, stupid, _stupid_!’

‘And I’ll be angry, angry, _angry_ if you don’t shut up and go to bed.’

Adrien stopped mid-pace to glare at his kwami. ‘You don’t get it! You’re just a kwami! You wouldn’t understand how badly I’ve screwed up even if I told it to you in detail!’

‘I _was_ there, y’know,’ Plagg reminded him. ‘I _can_ sense what’s going on even while you’re transformed. And you’re right, I don’t understand, because THERE’S NOTHING TO UNDERSTAND!’

‘I almost gave Marinette my phone number! Mine, as in _Adrien’s_ , which she already has!’

‘Sorry, you lost me at “almost”.’

‘I let Marinette kiss me!’

‘Correction: she kissed her own finger. Pretty gigantic difference, if you ask me.’

Adrien ran both hands through his hair. ‘But I _wanted_ her to kiss me,’ he muttered.

‘Then why’d you stop her?’

He stared at Plagg. ‘There’s a million reasons why, _like the fact that she was totally out of it,_ but also consider this: I can’t kiss Marinette just because she reminds me of Ladybug.’

‘Why not?’

‘Okay, now you’re just being obnoxious.’ Adrien started pacing again, but his kwami wasn’t finished.

‘Why would it be so bad to kiss someone who reminds you of Ladybug? She _obviously_ wanted to kiss you.’

‘She doesn’t know who I am beneath the mask,’ the boy sighed. ‘It would be creep-warning for me to kiss one of my best friends while she thinks I’m someone else. Besides, once again, she was drunk.’

‘Remind me again: how many posters and framed photos of you did she have in her bedroom? Which little model face was watching over her bed from above?’ Plagg shivered. ‘Your “friend” clearly sees you as something more than that.’

‘That’s stupid,’ Adrien opposed, ‘she’s just…’

But no matter how hard he tried, he could not come up with a satisfying ending to his sentence that wasn’t along the lines of “madly in love with me” or “really turned on by me”.

Adrien fell backwards into his bed with a groan, covering his face with his arms. ‘What should I do, Plagg?’

The kwami snorted. ‘So you’re asking me for advice, now?’

_You’re clearly more attentive than I am_ , Adrien thought, but he wouldn’t admit that to Plagg in a million billion years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I finished chapter 5 yesterday, and hoo boy, let me tell you... I think I might have to turn the sin down a notch if I don't want you all to explode.
> 
> Anyway, stay tuned for the next chapter, in which ~dreams are fulfilled~.


	3. Dreams

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adrien forgets to put on socks again, and Marinette breaks down because of a fist bump.

Adrien peeked out behind the door to the classroom. A few heads turned to see what was going on, and when they saw who he was, recognition creeped into their smiles.

‘Adrikins!’ one of them exclaimed; Chloé, whose face was actually ornated with more of a hungry grin than a friendly smile.

‘Hi,’ he replied with a faint smile. ‘Sorry, I, um, don’t have any socks on.’

He just had the time to see the girl’s smile fade as her confusion rose before he tucked his head back again and closed the door. Leaning his forehead against the door, he cursed under his breath.

_I need to stop using that excuse…_

He was a wreck. After his sleep-deprived body had finally won its battle against his confused and hormone-tainted teenage brain, maybe he’d gotten a total of three hours of recuperation. Getting up in the morning had been worse than the time he’d been forced to model for nine hours straight while suffering from stomach aches. He’d even considered ditching class, not only because he was feeling like hell, but also so he wouldn’t have to face Marinette. But now it seemed like she wasn’t even in the classroom. Did that mean she’d had the same idea as him? Maybe she was really hungover, with a torturous headache? What if she’d puked in her sleep? And slept on her back… God, what if she’d stopped breathing in the middle of the night? Oh no, now he was starting to worry—

‘… Adrien?’

Said boy spun around faster than the girl in front of him would’ve been able to say “Agreste”. The door creaked as he pushed his back into it as hard as he possibly could.

‘G-good morning—M… Marinette…?’ He paused, eyeing the figure in front of him.

Remember when he thought he was a wreck? Well, he had absolutely _nada_ on Marinette.

The usually so chipper girl was standing slumped and dressed in jeans and a baggy t-shirt that told nothing of her skills as a seamstress, her hair was pulled up in a messy bun on the top of her head, and on her nose rested a pair of large black sunglasses that were at least half as big as her face. Her entire essence practically screamed “KILL ME”.

‘Morning,’ she muttered without so much as looking at him. He swallowed.

‘Uh, hey there, Marinette. Did you… did you have fun last night?’

The moment he’d asked the question, he regretted it. His feelings of regret worsened when he saw Marinette squeeze her eyes closed.

‘Sure,’ she said, voice flat and emotionless. Then she seemed to remember whom she was talking to, as she tensed and looked up at him with flushed cheeks. ‘You did great, by the way! You looked so… so comfortable… on that runway.’

Now it was his turn to blush. He rubbed his neck shyly. ‘Um, thanks…’ He glanced at her face for just a moment before quickly averting his gaze again. _Damn it, why do I have to be like this? It’s just Marinette! Just a friend!_

Just a friend who happened to have tons of photos of him on her walls and ceiling.

Just a friend who had, just last night, had her lips positioned less than a centimetre away from his.

Just a friend who’d asked him to join her in her bed.

Just a friend whom he had been _this close_ to saying yes to.

And later _regretted not doing it._

Adrien’s stomach churned.

Marinette looked past him into the classroom. ‘So… ah… should we go inside…?’

‘Yep!’ he exclaimed, perhaps a tiny bit too eagerly. ‘Time to learn!’

The entire school day was a pain. He could barely concentrate in any of the day’s classes—all he kept thinking about was last night and what it all meant. Nothing had _happened_ per se, but it still seemed like _everything_ had changed.

Even Ladybug acted weirdly when they teamed up against an Akuma later that day. It wasn’t anything noticeable during the fight, but afterwards, when she’d purified the Akuma and Paris along with it, she transformed from cool, untouchable Ladybug into a polka-dotted stick.

All because of that fist bump.

They had _always_ fist bumped—A L W A Y S—but apparently, this time was the one that broke the camel’s back.

‘LB? You okay?’ he asked when she’d stood frozen, fist in the air beside her and blue eyes fixed to his face, for at least ten seconds. She blinked and quickly retracted her hand to her side.

‘Y-yeah, I’m great—just great! Just, um…’ She swallowed and tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘Just have a lot to think about.’

She was about to use her yo-yo to get away, but he stopped her by shoving an arm in front of her. When she gave him a nervous look, he immediately jerked his arm back.

‘Are you mad at me?’ he asked, and it almost came out in a whimper.

‘Mad? What, no!’

He tried to catch her gaze, but she kept averting it. His mood fell even lower.

‘Is something going on? You can talk to me.’

Ladybug shook her head fiercely. ‘No. There’s nothing going on!’

When her head stopped moving, he realised she was blushing hard. He blinked at her in confusion.

‘Oh… kay,’ he said slowly.

‘I have to go,’ she squeezed out through clenched teeth, and before he could say goodbye, she was off. He stood there looking after her for a long moment, trying to calm himself down.

_She’s not angry at you, she doesn’t hate you, you haven’t done anything wrong, she just has a lot on her plate._

He needed to trust his partner. It wasn’t like he didn’t have his own problems, anyway—the Akuma fight had momentarily made him forget about the whole Marinette thing, but he knew he had to do something about it. His first dozen ideas had consisted of different variations of him sweeping last night under the rug and moving on with his life, but it just hadn’t felt right. His father may not have taught him the communication skills he would have wished to have possessed, but he knew one thing, and that was that nothing good had ever come from ignoring one’s problems.

So when he finally snapped out of his Ladybug stupor, he took a deep breath and took off in the direction of the Dupain-Cheng residence.

He had no clue what he would say or even do when he got there—he just knew he had to see Marinette and sort this through, whatever it was. Maybe she regretted everything… or maybe she didn’t.

What he would do if that happened to be the case remained to be determined.

When he finally dropped down at his classmate’s balcony—after having paused midway to de-transform and feed Plagg some cheese before transforming back again—his nervousness was at an all-time high. It was so bad he considered just going home instead.

‘Come on, you stupid cat,’ he muttered to himself in a bad pep talk. ‘It’s just Marinette. Just a friend! She’s not going to bite you. Or hit you. Or tell you to go to hell.’ He winced. _Maybe…?_

He took a deep breath and prepared himself to knock on the skylight door. His heart skipped a beat. Instead of knocking, he spun around to lean against the balcony rail, hiding his face in his hands.

_What am I doing? What am I trying to accomplish here? This is so stupid, I shouldn’t have come here._

A creak sounded behind him. Adrien froze.

‘What the— _Chat Noir?_ What are you doing here?’

Slowly, he turned around to face his classmate—one quick look revealed that she was his _scantily clad_ classmate, dressed only in soft, tiny shorts and a tight tank top—while trying to come up with an excuse for being there that did not in any way, shape or form involve something that could be interpreted the wrong way.

‘I, uh, I…’ He glanced down at her legs, then caught himself and returned his gaze to her face. ‘... just stopped to rest on my… on my way home?’

She blinked twice. She was still holding the door open above her, but after a moment of consideration, she took the last steps up the stairs and joined him on the balcony. Chat swallowed.

‘I guess it’s good that you’re here,’ Marinette started hesitantly. ‘About last night—’

‘Y-you were drunk!’ he exclaimed, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. ‘As far as I’m concerned, last night didn’t even happen.’

Adrien groaned inwardly. _What the hell, what was that? Didn’t even happen? That’s NOT what I wanted to say!_

Marinette bit down on her bottom lip. ‘Oh,’ she said. Then nothing. They just stood there, in silence, both avoiding to look at the other as best they could.

‘Sooo…’ Adrien started, just to break the silence. ‘I should probably—’

‘I wish you’d gotten in bed with me.’

Adrien’s eyes widened as Marinette flung her hands over her mouth.

Suddenly, the boy came to notice that the space between him and his underdressed friend was way too small. He took a stumbling step back, realising only then how that move could be interpreted. Marinette bit down on her bottom lip, inadvertently drawing his gaze to her mouth. He stared.

 _Stop ogling her mouth, you buffoon,_ he tried to tell himself, but his eyes wouldn’t obey.

‘I-I’m sorry,’ Marinette stammered out, backing closer to the skylight door. ‘I’ll… just go now.’

‘Wait,’ Adrien called, reaching out with one clawed hand. She stopped, her cheeks flushed. ‘We could… we could talk?’

Marinette eyed the door.

‘Out here,’ he clarified nervously.

She nodded slowly. ‘Okay… We can talk.’

Adrien exhaled in relief. Talking was good. Talking was easy—at least it usually was—and it would give him time to figure out what it was that he wanted.

Marinette plopped down in her only deckchair. After a moment of consideration, Adrien leaned back against the balcony railing, gripping the metal hard with both hands on his sides.

They were quiet for a long while.

 _What am I doing here?_ he silently asked himself again. He’d convinced himself that it was because he needed to clear the air between him and Marinette, but was that really the case? Maybe the smart, considerate, selfless thing to do would have been to never visit Marinette as Chat Noir again. Maybe he should have just tried to forget about last night and given her the chance to do the same. But here he was, asking her to talk to him, and he knew deep inside that it wasn’t for her sake at all.

 ‘I’m sorry for last night,’ Marinette finally said in a shaky voice. ‘I’m sorry I made you uncomfortable. There’s no excuse… I’d had way too much to drink, and…’

He glanced at her nervously. ‘And?’

She hesitated, wringing her hands in her lap. ‘You… remind me of someone. Someone I’d been thinking about a lot just before you showed up.’

Adrien nodded slowly.

‘There’s this guy...’ Marinette paused. ‘He’s way out of my league, but I just can’t stop thinking about him.’

He tensed. Suddenly his heartbeats were booming in his head. _Marinette too…?_ He watched her nervously weave her fingers together.

‘You reminded me of him, with the way you acted last night, and I… drunken me went with it. You know.’

She gave him a wary look, and something in his face must have made her really uncomfortable, because then she got up on her feet and widened her eyes. ‘Look, I’m really sorry about all of this, it got out of hand, I shouldn’t have said those things to you, please _Chaton_ , I hope you can forget all of this—’

Adrien let go of the railing and stood up straight. ‘What did you call me?’

She blinked. ‘Ch… _Chaton_?’

He closed his eyes and took a deep, shuddering breath. _Damn it damn it damn it damn it, not now, please, this is not the right time._ As he felt his cheeks—and a certain other part of him—rise in heat, he whirled around and bent over the railing, grateful for the cool breeze that grabbed his hair for a moment.

‘Chat,’ Marinette said behind him. He opened his eyes.

‘Who is it?’ he asked.

‘Who… what…’

He spun around again to face her head-on, refusing to look away from her face. ‘You said I remind you of someone,’ he reminded her. ‘Who is it?’

Marinette just stared at him.

‘Who is it that I remind you of, Marinette?’

There was a long pause. Marinette glanced at his feet, then at the deckchair, then at his knees, where her gaze remained for the next few seconds, as if that was as far up as she could bear to look.

He should have seen her answer coming. Really, he should. Maybe it was a testament to how radically different Adrien and Chat Noir were that he didn’t, even with all the things Marinette had said the day before.

‘A-Adrien Agreste,’ she confessed.

At first, he just stared at her as his brain processed what she had said. _Wait—what? It’s… Oh._

Then the laughter burst out of him. Marinette stared at him in confusion, so he shook his head while he tried to clear his head enough to speak.

‘I remind you of Adrien Agreste,’ he repeated, and she nodded warily. He laughed again. Maybe he should worry about the fact that Marinette had drawn parallels between him and his alter-ego, but at the moment, all he felt was a strange relief.

‘Marinette,’ he said softly, taking a careful step closer. ‘You remind me of someone, too. Someone who’s way out of _my_ league.’

He saw her tense. ‘Yeah? Who is that?’

Adrien laughed a third time. ‘Really? You have no clue?’ He took another step, prompting her to inhale sharply. It made his blood rush. _I never thought I could affect someone like that._

‘N-no, I don’t know what you’re talking about—’

‘Ladybug,’ he whispered at the same time as he took two more steps. Now he was close enough to feel the heat radiating from her body. ‘You remind me of Ladybug.’

Marinette parted her lips. Her eyelids trembled. But despite the fact that she had lots of space behind her, she hadn’t moved at all. She hadn’t moved away from him even once.

‘R-really?’ she stammered. ‘I mean, I’m so clumsy…’

‘You are,’ he admitted. After a moment’s consideration, he raised his hand to stroke a loose sling of hair behind her ear. She closed her eyes. ‘But there are these little moments… where you…’ He exhaled softly as his leather-covered fingers grazed her cheek on the way back. ‘Where you get this look in your eyes, like you can do anything. Like the world is yours, and you have figured it all out. And that’s something I’ve only ever seen in two people—you, and Ladybug.’

She bit her lip. ‘Are you trying to say what I think you’re trying to say?’

He shrugged, trying to play it cool even though his heart was racing. ‘What do you think I’m trying to say?’

The silence that came next seemed to go on forever. Adrien could have sworn he could see each little minor muscle in her face move in slow motion as she thought about what to reply. _Was this a bad idea? It was, wasn’t it?_

‘I don’t want to draw the wrong conclusion,’ she said eventually.

‘And I don’t want to make you uncomfortable,’ he hurried to say, taking a step back. ‘I should probably leave, I mean, this was a stupid idea anyway—’

‘He doesn’t want me,’ she said quietly.

He paused. ‘What?’

‘Adrien,’ she continued. ‘He just sees me as a friend. It’s not like I could ever have a chance with him. So if you’re willing to… I mean, it could be just like a one time thing. Just to try. Maybe that could clear some of this weirdness between the two of us, too?’

Adrien was pretty sure his heart had stopped. How in the world had she managed to squeeze that huge info dump into just a few sentences? His head was getting overheated trying to process it. How was he even supposed to respond? ‘Marinette… I… Adrien, he—’

‘Was that what you were trying to say?’ she interrupted sharply, making it clear that she didn’t want his pity. Not that he could give her a satisfactory answer, anyway. How the hell did you tell one of your best friends that your civilian self was too enamoured with your superhero self’s superhero friend, without revealing your identity and making everything super weird? You couldn’t.

‘Yeah,’ he said instead. ‘It was. O—only if you—you’re interested, I mean,’ he added then with a blush.

Just as Marinette gave a decisive nod, Adrien caught up to what he really was suggesting, and what they had apparently just agreed to do.

_Marinette’s a friend. A close friend. Can I really do this to her without telling her who I am? Wouldn’t that be horrible? Wouldn’t it be extremely unethical? She’s not only a friend, but also a friend who apparently has a crush on me, I mean, she has my face all over her walls and ceiling, and here I am, wanting to take advantage of those feelings just to pretend that I’m finally with Ladybug, so isn’t that almost like abusing Marinette’s friendship for my own twisted good?_

But then he looked back at Marinette, and he saw her bottom lip slide under her teeth, and he watched her look at him from beneath her lashes, and he watched her eyes glimmer just like Ladybug’s, and all his previous thoughts flew out the window.

‘How do you want to do this?’ she asked, and he could swear he heard excitement in her voice. ‘Maybe… we should get close…?’

It was an innocent enough suggestion. Adrien nodded. ‘Sure.’

Heart racing, head spinning, he took the last few steps up to the dark-haired girl and steeled himself as she raised her hands to his chest. She closed her eyes, so he did the same.

 _Ladybug,_ his brain whispered. _Ladybug’s hands. Ladybug’s breathing. Ladybug’s warmth, emanating towards me._ The thought made him dizzy.

He placed his hands on her hips. They both pulled closer to each other, and then he could feel her bend her neck. Her breath caressed his lips, making him part them almost subconsciously.

 _Ladybug,_ he thought again, and suddenly it _was_ Ladybug he held in his arms, who breathed raggedly against his lips, who leaned into him.

The kiss came so naturally that he barely registered it all at first.

He sighed into it, relishing in the softness of her lips, the warmth of her breaths, the sweet smell of berries—probably her lip gloss—as she slowly parted her lips and welcomed him inside. For a moment, they just breathed into each other, letting their hands slowly caress the other’s hips, waist, back, and enveloping themselves in a soft, dreamy mist that seemed to stop the world around them.

Then, just to see what would happen, Adrien ran the tip of his tongue along Marinette’s lower lip. What he got in response was a tiny little gasp and her body pushing closer to his. He shivered as the sound seemed to almost reverberate through his body.

‘Do it again,’ Marinette whispered.

He didn’t hesitate for even a second. Once again, he let his tongue taste the sweetness of her lips.

And Marinette _moaned,_ right into his mouth.

He let out a sound that sounded embarrassingly similar to a whimper as he gripped her hips harder and pulled her closer, and when she breathlessly parted her lips even further, he moved his hands up along her back, to her neck, then into her hair; and she had her hair in pigtails, of course she did, and he ran his hands through them, dissolving them so that her hair instead fell in waves, and oh god, he’d dreamt of doing that with Ladybug’s pigtails so many times he couldn’t even remember how many.

‘Adrien,’ she whispered when he left her lips to plant a kiss on her neck, and hearing his real name made him jerk at first, before he remembered. She was imagining kissing him—the _real_ him.

It didn’t bother him. Not at all, in fact. He could live with kissing Ladybug’s neck while she moaned his given name into the night.

‘Mm?’ he responded, groggily.

She didn’t answer; her hands moved up to cup his face and pull him back to her lips, and it was such a decisive move that his heart squeezed up against his lungs and emptied them of all air in one single whoosh. He had to weave his fingers together with her hair to stop his hands from roaming all over her body.

_She feels so good. Oh wow, she feels amazing._

But then her kiss deepened, and her body pushed up against him, and he was getting so hot he could barely think straight.

Someone had to be the sane one. Someone had to be the adult.

 _I’m kissing Marinette like she’s the last girl on Earth,_ he reminded himself, _like she’s Ladybug, and I should stop, because it’s Marinette—_

She bit down on his bottom lip, and _shit,_ he was getting really hard, and if he didn’t break away from her right now, he wasn’t sure he would ever be able to.

_Just push her away. JUST DO IT!_

And somehow, he must have done it, because then her warmth disappeared and all that was left were their heavy breaths mingling together in the cool air between them.

He chose not to open his eyes. He didn’t know what he would feel when he saw her.

Marinette cleared her throat. ‘Um… That was…’

Adrien waited. _That was stupid? Amazing? Wrong? Hot as hell?_

‘… It was nice,’ she concluded.

He opened his eyes.

In front of him stood his classmate, his friend, his biggest fan, with her eyes closed, her hair falling in waves over her shoulders, her lips swollen and her cheeks in an angry red colour that would have matched Ladybug’s suit perfectly. Her chest was heaving, and _hell_ if her shorts hadn’t slid down a few centimetres, teasing the soft skin that disappeared under the miniscule piece of fabric.

‘Yeah,’ he said, his voice thick.

 _Marinette,_ he reminded himself again, _it’s Marinette, so sTOP UNDRESSING HER IN YOUR MIND, YOU GIANT PERV!_

Her eyelids fluttered open, showing intelligent blue eyes that looked at him like no one had ever looked at him before. Like this was the first time in her life that she’d seen the world in colour.

Then something changed in her gaze, and she turned away from him quickly, as if he’d just turned completely naked.

‘I-I need to be alone,’ she breathed, huddling over the skylight door, ready to flee.

Adrien frowned and backed away, chilled by her sudden change of heart. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to make anything weird—’

‘No,’ she hurried to assure him, ‘you haven’t done anything wrong. I just… need to think.’ She took a deep breath before glancing at him over her shoulder. ‘Could we… meet here again tomorrow…?’

‘Of course,’ Adrien grabbed the railing beside him. ‘I… I’ll be there. I mean, _here._ ’

She nodded resolutely. Then she opened the skylight door and melted into the darkness of her bedroom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join our horny duo next time, when Adrien is such a cheeky bastard that he nearly kills poor Marinette.


	4. Reality

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... in which Marinette and Adrien face reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your comments on the previous chapters! I know I haven't replied to any of them, but I read and cherish them all~. It's just that, as an aspie, I tend to get anxious about interacting with new people - even on the Internet. Basically there are two ways to get me to reply: a) ask me a direct question, or b) hang around long enough that I get used to your presence ;)
> 
> Anyway, here's chapter 4!

‘Aaaadrikins!’

Marinette cringed as she saw Chloe sidle up beside Adrien on the bench below, slapping a handful of photographs onto the desk.

‘H-hey Chloe,’ he said, leaning away. ‘What’s up?’

The brightly clad blonde grabbed his hand, bent his fingers into a fist and tucked a pen into it.

‘I had these photographs taken during the show,’ she drawled, twining a strand of hair around her finger, ‘and they turned out _fantastic._ But I’d love it if you could sign them for me. Will you? Please, Adrikins?’

_Photographs?_

As stealthily as she could, Marinette leaned forward to sneak a peek at the photos lying on the desk. They were indeed photos from the show—there he was, the glowing glitter god that was Model Adrien®, caught in a smirk and a wink right at the end of the runway. Marinette sighed. _What I wouldn’t give to have one of those on my bedroom wall…_

‘Sure, whatever,’ Adrien murmured. He signed the photographs without even looking at them. When all of them had his signature, Chloe fished them up, held them to her chest and bent forward to plant a kiss on his cheek. He let her.

‘Thank you,’ she sang as she returned to her own seat. Marinette clenched her jaw.

_That damn witch. Always treating Adrien like he’s nothing but handsome meat. If only Adrien could tell her off, just once. It’d be so great to see—_

‘Hey, Marinette.’

She was harshly pulled back to reality by the kind voice of none other than the subject of her dreams. She fell right into his bottomless eyes as he turned to look at her.

‘Hey,’ she breathed. Then she remembered last night, and immediately cast down her eyes. ‘Y-you overslept today?’

He’d arrived in class just as it started. Not that she’d minded; it had meant that she hadn’t needed to pretend to be normal around him.

Adrien looked away. ‘Mm-hm.’ He rolled his shoulders and bent his neck back and forth, then to the left and to the right. ‘I think I slept no more than maybe 2 hours, though.’

She frowned, worry starting to creep up on her. ‘No? Are you stressed out by something?’

He shook his head. Then his green eyes returned to look straight at her. She could have sworn that she saw a glint of mischief there for just a fraction of a second, but in the next moment, he just looked exhausted.

‘I was kept awake by some… intrusive thoughts.’

She had no idea what he was talking about, but it reminded her of her own night. She’d tried to sleep, but the thoughts of Chat had been too palpable. Eventually, she had given up, transformed into Ladybug and gone out to get rid of some excess energy. When she’d gotten back an hour later, her head had been clear enough that she could finally fall asleep.

Adrien drummed his fingers against his desk. ‘Marinette?’

‘Yeah?’

He stopped drumming. For a long moment, he just stared at nothing, completely still in his seat. Then he turned back to her, and this time, the mischief was unmistakable in his gaze.

‘You look good today.’

Her heart stopped beating.

‘Especially that hickey on your neck,’ he concluded.

That made Alya rustle to life in her seat. ‘ _Hickey?!_ Where?!’

Marinette felt like she would explode any second, the way Adrien was looking at her. He was clearly trying and failing not to look smug. _WHAT THE HELL?_

Alya grabbed Marinette’s shoulders and turned her around so she could see the other side of her neck. ‘Oh my god, girl,’ she whispered. ‘You have a secret lover?’

‘No!’ Marinette exclaimed, cheeks red hot. ‘It’s obviously not a hickey! It’s—it’s—'

‘It obviously _is_ a hickey,’ Nino added unhelpfully. His gaze slid over to his best friend, whose smugness promptly disappeared and changed into nonchalance.

‘So what?’ Adrien said with a shrug. ‘Leave Marinette alone. If she wants to keep stuff like that private, that’s up to her.’

 _That’s… surprisingly thoughtful._ Especially seeing that he had been the one to point out that she had a hickey in the first place. But she couldn’t help feeling a bit disappointed that Adrien didn’t seem to mind that someone had been intimate enough with her to give her a hickey.

When the bell rang, Adrien left in a hurry, gesturing with his phone to show that he had to take a call.

‘I’ll catch up,’ he told them.

Marinette sighed as she watched him disappear out of sight around the corner. _No more of that weird teasing._ It was both relieving and disappointing.

‘Hey,’ Alya whispered beside her, chucking an elbow into her waist. ‘Look!’

Marinette frowned, but turned to look where her best friend was pointing. At first, she didn’t see anything out of place, but then she caught sight of something on the bench where Adrien had been sitting.

_A photograph!_

Faster than a starving hyena, Marinette sprang forward and snagged the little rectangular photograph, sneaking a peek at it only as she started tucking it into her bag. Adrien’s signature wasn’t anything special in all honesty; just his own name written a bit sloppily. She’d seen it many times before, and she even had some of her own at home, but she just couldn’t get enough of it. Maybe because it felt so special to own something that he had marked in some way, that he had held in his own two hands…

_Okay, I’m a liiiittle obsessed, I admit it._

Her eyes glazed over as a thought popped into her mind. Someday, he might hold _her_ with his own two hands…

‘Earth to Marinette,’ Alya teased by the door. ‘You gonna eat in the classroom, or…?’

Marinette flushed. ‘C—coming.’

Alya glanced at Marinette’s neck, then grabbed her hand and started pulling her with her out of the room. ‘Let’s take a detour first, hm?’

She dragged her over to the nearest bathroom. As soon as the door closed behind them, she dug out her makeup set from her bag and gestured for Marinette to position herself beneath the lamp near the mirror.

‘Did you see the way he was looking at me?’ Marinette asked while obeying her friend’s commands. Did you see it?’

‘Yeah girl, I saw it.’

‘Wasn’t that really weird?’

Alya shook her head in amusement while giving Marinette’s neck a layer of emergency concealer. ‘Didn’t I tell you the boy has finally fallen for your charms?’

Marinette pressed her lips together.

Alya paused and narrowed her eyes. ‘Wait a minute…’ She leaned in closer to give her friend a suspicious look. ‘Adrien wasn’t the one who gave you this hickey, was he?’

‘N-no!’

‘Come on, Mari, you can’t lie to me.’

‘I promise you, I’m not lying!’

‘So who was it, then?’

Marinette groaned and squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t tell Alya that she’d been locking lips with _Chat Noir_ , because it was so ridiculous and stupid that she could barely fathom it herself.

Chat Noir.

The smug, silly kitten that never let an opportunity to flirt with Ladybug get away from him.

Marinette had kissed _that guy._

 _That guy_ had given her a hickey. Whether it was by mistake or just for laughs, she didn’t know, but he’d definitely, consciously, _actively_ sucked on her neck hard enough to give her that mark.

_When will he do it again?_

She frowned at her own thought.

‘Mari,’ Alya persisted, giving her a premonitory look.

‘It wasn’t anything serious, and I haven’t figured out what to think of it yet. When I do, I promise I’ll tell you. Okay?’

Her friend sighed deeply. ‘Fine. Just take care of yourself, hm?’

Marinette smiled. ‘I promise.’

 

* * *

 

Adrien followed Marinette with his eyes as she sat down with her tray two tables away from him, right across from Nino and Alya. She was laughing, showing two straight rows of white teeth. _Amazing how they can be so white even though she literally lives in a bakery._

He looked away, hiding behind his hand just as Alya glanced in his general direction. He’d purposefully chosen not to sit with them at lunch. It wasn’t that he didn’t like to hang out with them, but… It was weird to pretend in front of Marinette that he wasn’t the one who kissed her on her balcony last night. He was a terrible liar, and he was sure his friends would interrogate him if they got too suspicious.

 _But you can’t hide from Marinette forever,_ he reminded himself. _You have to see her tonight._

Then again, that wasn’t as Adrien, wasn’t it? That was as Chat Noir, and as Chat, he was way better at pretending that everything was fine than as Adrien.

He wondered what she had in mind for tonight. She’d obviously had a lot to think about yesterday, just the same as him. So what conclusion had she come to? What would she tell him?

He barely knew what he thought of it all himself. He’d spent the night tossing and turning, wondering if he’d committed an ethical crime of epic proportions.

Kissing one of your best friends while she thought you were someone else… Wasn’t that practically the same as taking advantage of her? Wasn’t it some kind of authority abuse? He knew something she didn’t, and chose not to tell her just so he would get what he wanted.

_I’m a horrible human being. I’m just like father._

Thinking of the devil, his phone buzzed in his pocket just then, and when he pulled it out, he had an unread text message.

**> Rescheduled job this afternoon. Car picking you up at 12.30.  <**

He frowned at the screen. The text was from Nathalie, and he knew he wouldn’t be able to get any information out of her even if he tried. But to skip an entire afternoon of classes?

He glanced in the direction of his friends. They were laughing. Had they even noticed that he wasn’t with them?

His stomach rumbled. He’d been meaning to buy lunch eventually, but seeing that he’d be picked up in just a few minutes, there wasn’t much time left to eat. _Maybe there will be snacks at whatever photo shoot I’ll be doing._

 

* * *

 

Marinette looked up from her lunchbox as a blond figure moved in the periphery of her vision. She frowned.

‘Wasn’t that Adrien?’

Alya and Nino followed her gaze. ‘I don’t see anything,’ Nino said.

But Marinette was sure that it had been him. _Why wouldn’t he come sit with us?_

‘Speaking of Adrien, he should have finished that phone call by now,’ Alya said. ‘Why don’t you text him, Marinette?’

‘Oh. Um. Yeah.’

Marinette brought out her phone and opened up her conversation with Adrien. To call it lacklustre would be a massive understatement; most of their messages had been something along the lines of, “We’re outside”, “OK”, and “C U there”. She sighed. She would have loved to have a more regular conversation with him on there, but how would she even start something like that without making it obvious what she was trying to do?

**_> U coming? We’ve got a table by the oak tree.  <_ **

She clicked “send” and stared at the screen as she waited for a response.

‘Maybe he’s buying lunch,’ Nino suggested.

‘Why wouldn’t he do that in the cafeteria? It wouldn’t take him this long.’

‘Might have been a long call, then?’

Marinette tuned out her friends’ discussion as Adrien’s reply popped up on the screen.

**> Sorry. Something came up. C U tomorrow!  <**

She showed the message to Nino and Alya. ‘You think he’s okay?’

Alya frowned. ‘We can ask him tomorrow. If something’s come up, he probably won’t have the time to text anyway.’

‘Yeah…’

With a sigh, Marinette tucked her phone into her bag again and turned back to her lunch. He was probably fine; he had seemed to be in a good mood earlier, when he’d joked about her hickey. Maybe his dad needed him for something.

_I just hope that nothing bad has happened._

When she came home that afternoon, one of the first things Marinette did was to pin her new photograph of Adrien on the pinboard hanging on the wall next to her bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was a bit shorter than the other chapters. I hope you'll still come back next time, when Adrien gets to eat a croissant...
> 
> ... and SIN happens ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)


	5. Croissant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Croissants are eaten, lips are bitten, shirts are peeled, and identities are pretended.
> 
> Also: angst. (Just a tiny bit)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I watched the Style Queen episodes yesterday (OMG SO GOOD) and when Audrey said that glitter is the highest fashion right now, I was like "YESSSSS" *pumping metaphorical fists in the air*
> 
> No but seriously, I think those episodes were the best in the entire two seasons so far. Gah.
> 
> ... Here, have some sin! (ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧

Adrien gulped down the entire glass of water in one single breath, then practically fell onto the couch in the dressing room. His body was sore. He was freezing cold from having posed half-naked in front of an industrial fan for the last couple of hours. He was tired. He had a headache from hell.

And he was hungry. Good god, was he hungry. There had been no time for lunch, no time for snacks, and then his father had told him that there would be a late dinner.

But Adrien knew dinner would be even later than promised, because it was so late in the evening now that he was starting to worry that Marinette would think he’d bailed on her. He couldn’t go home without stopping by her place to talk to her first.

At least he wasn’t thirsty anymore. But to get off the couch and stand up on his own two legs again…

He let out a long, pained groan.

‘Plagg,’ he mumbled with his lips half pressed against a pillow.

The little black kwami appeared from his bag in the corner, holding a piece of cheese in his tiny paws. ‘You done?’

Adrien gestured lazily with his right hand. ‘I need you to transform me.’

Plagg gave him a dead-pan look. ‘So say the words.’

‘I’m just… so tired…’

The kwami rolled his eyes and threw the piece of cheese into his mouth. ‘Jussht transhform and you’ll be tip-top.’

‘You sure?’

Another look that said, _“Are you kidding me?”_

Adrien sighed heavily, then exerted what was left of his energy to push himself up on his elbows. ‘Plagg,’ he yawned. ‘Claws out.’

He closed his eyes while Plagg did his thing. A warmth spread through his body, relaxing his sore muscles at the same time as his head cleared. When he opened his eyes again, he was still tired and hungry, but at least he didn’t feel on the verge of dying, and he could get up from the couch with relative ease. He sighed in relief.

‘I’m going to buy you so much cheese you’ll have to eat non-stop for a month to even make a dent in the pile,’ he murmured, knowing that Plagg would hear it. Then he sauntered up to the window and pushed it open. He felt a tiny bit unsteady on his feet, but not enough to bother leaving his high altitude. He trusted his powers; even _if_ he fell, he’d be able to react in time to save it.

Each jump across the rooftops was unusually demanding tonight. With a groan, he landed next to a chimney and leaned against it for a moment just to catch up with himself.

He could see Marinette’s balcony from there; several light strands were lit, colouring the night in bright colours, and in the middle of the sea of light sat Marinette herself, gazing up at the stars in the night. Adrien huffed in shame. _She’s waiting for me?_ He would have left earlier if he could, but there had just been no way.

_Well, better not let her wait for even a second longer._

He landed on the balcony softly, but then his left leg gave in and he stumbled forward, almost falling straight into Marinette’s lap. Thankfully, he managed to catch himself before it got that far.

She got up in one swift movement.

‘Chat!’ she exclaimed in surprise. Then she studied his face more closely. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yeah,’ he replied, leaning against the balcony railing as casually as he could, trying not to make it look like he needed the support. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late. I got caught up in something.’

But the worried frown on her face didn’t disappear. ‘Are you sure? You look really pale.’

To reassure her, he left the railing and walked towards her with a soft smile. ‘I’m absolutely su—’

And then he was on his knees on the floor, the world spinning around him.

Marinette was by his side in an instant. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Chat! Oh my god! Did something happen?’

He leaned into her warmth with a sigh and closed his eyes. ‘I’m… just… worn out,’ he mumbled.

As if on cue, his stomach rumbled loudly.

‘… And I haven’t eaten since breakfast,’ he added.

She stared at him. Then she got up on her feet again. ‘Do you think you can get inside on your own?’

Adrien nodded slowly, unsure where she was going with this.

‘Good. Wait for me in my room while I go fetch a few things from downstairs.’

* * *

Marinette watched with worry as Chat Noir slowly took another bite from the croissant. He was sitting on her bed with his legs crossed beneath him, a glass of water in one hand and the croissant in the other. But he ate so slowly, so painstakingly carefully that she was starting to wonder if something was wrong.

‘Is it okay?’ she asked.

He nodded. His eyes were glassy. ‘Yeah,’ he croaked. ‘This is really good, Mari. Really good.’

Her shoulders relaxed. ‘Thank god.’

He gave her a strange look then; as if he was confused by her worry. ‘It’s just hunger, y’know,’ he said. ‘I’m not dying.’

‘But you haven’t eaten since breakfast!’

He chewed for a few moments before replying. ‘It’s usually not that long…’

Usually not that long? _That doesn’t sound good at all._

She didn’t want to pry; she knew full well how important it was to keep a secret identity from leaking out. But she couldn’t help but worry about him.

‘I don’t want you to go hungry,’ she murmured.

Chat gave her a tired smile. He was starting to get a little colour back in his cheeks. ‘Thank you for this. You didn’t have to.’

She nodded, then watched him in silence as he kept eating. He finished his croissant, then picked a piece of baguette with cheese out of the paper bag she’d brought him. When he’d eaten that, he set the bag and the glass of water aside.

‘Thank you,’ he said again.

Marinette eyed the paper bag. He’d barely eaten anything. Still, it was better than nothing, she supposed.

A silence lowered itself over the room. Marinette, who was still standing up—she had been way too riled up by Chat’s dizzy spell to sit—now carefully took her place beside Chat on the bed. He eyed her warily but relaxed soon after, leaning back against her cat pillow. He smirked when he saw what it portrayed, but didn’t comment on it.

Marinette gripped the fabric on her thighs in her fists.

‘I’m sorry I pushed you away last night,’ she murmured.

He shook his head. ‘No. You _should_ think carefully before jumping into something like that.’

 _Something like that…_ She swallowed. ‘Have… have _you_ thought about it?’

Chat scoffed. ‘How could I not?’ Then his cheeks turned red. ‘I mean… Um…’

Since he was obviously uncomfortable, she tried to reassure him with a smile, but she probably just looked nervous. ‘I’ve been thinking about it a lot, too.’

He looked at her with careful interest, his eyes asking, _“And?”_

She opened her mouth to continue, but quickly closed it again. Instead, she lowered her gaze to his chest, which was moving slowly as he breathed. Beside it, she noticed the muscles in his arms tense, relax, and then tense again. Her gaze slid up to his face again, and she marvelled once again over how much he looked like Adrien. His eyes were a little narrower, and her classmate’s shyness was nowhere to be found in that expression, but Chat’s eyes were just as green, his cheekbones were just as sharp, and his lips were just as full.

His gaze met hers. He blinked a few times at first, but then the gaze steadied, and neither he nor Marinette veered away with their eyes.

Her heart was beating faster and faster in her chest, and she could hear Chat’s breathing speed up a little, too. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed discreetly. But she focused all her attention on his eyes.

_So green. So… intense…_

If someone would ask her afterwards which one of them had been the first to touch the other, she wouldn’t be able to answer. All she knew was that suddenly, her right hand was cupping his neck, and his left was slowly scooting up her thigh, and then they were leaning into each other—

This time, there was no smell—or taste—of lipstick, nor of alcohol. As their lips met, the scent that reached her nostrils was all skin, perfume and hot breath. Chat let out a tiny whimper when she parted his lips with hers, hungrily seeking his tongue. When he met her halfway, it was her turn to sigh in content. Her other hand reached up to join the first by his neck, and her fingers started playing with his hair just as Chat’s hand squeezed her thigh.

He pushed closer to her, leaning his head to the side to get a better angle, which resulted in a deeper kiss and even more of his body warmth enveloping her.

 _He’s so good at this,_ she thought in amazement. She’d kissed guys who had slopped around with way too much tongue, or gone way too fast forward, or held her way too hard, but Chat managed to do everything _just enough_ —just enough to tease her without going too slowly, just enough to please her without getting too heavy. He _must_ have done this several times before, or else he was unfairly talented at it.

With her eyes closed, it was surprisingly easy to pretend that Chat was Adrien; as long as she avoided touching his leather suit, she could almost convince herself that it was her crush she was snogging and not her secret partner. And he seemed to be able to pretend, too, because he was getting really into it, running his right hand through her hair again while the left dug its fake nails into her thigh.

Somehow, she ended up straddling him. His hands moved up to her butt, and at the same time, he gasped into her mouth.

_So you’re a butt guy, huh?_

She was getting really riled up, and somewhere along the way she must have started grinding against him, because suddenly, he let out a groan that sounded almost painful and gripped her thighs as if he needed her to stop. She stilled and untangled herself from his tongue and lips, without opening her eyes. They both breathed heavily into each other’s mouths for a moment.

‘Did I—’

‘I’m sorry,’ he breathed. ‘You feel so good, I just—’

‘I’m getting too intense,’ she interrupted in embarrassment. ‘I know. Sorry.’

He scoffed softly, causing a whiff of his pleasant breath to wash over her. ‘Please don’t say sorry. I’m just not… dressed for the occasion.’

That finally made her open her eyes. Chat Noir’s wild green eyes were staring back at her. Marinette glanced down at his leather suit and instantly realised what he was getting at.

‘Oh,’ she breathed. ‘Oh.’

Marinette took a quick look around. Her gaze caught on to the sewing machine on her chaise lounge below, and an idea was born.

‘Hang on just a sec,’ she said, and then she climbed off of the superhero and stumbled down the staircase and over to the pile of fabric next to the chaise lounge.

Chat frowned at the mischievous smile she gave as she returned. ‘Should I be worried?’

Eager to continue where they left off, she started wrapping the strip of fabric over her eyes. When she was finished, she carefully climbed back onto him. He gripped her hips as she leaned forward to whisper in his ear.

‘Now you can de-transform.’

She felt him freeze. ‘De—wait, what? Are you sure that’s a good idea?’

Marinette stilled. Had she misjudged the situation so gravely? Was she forcing this on him? She started climbing off him, but his index fingers hooked around the belt loops on her shorts, keeping her from moving.

‘You don’t have to,’ she began, flushing. ‘I—I just thought it would solve the problem, but I don’t want to force you into anything.’

‘It’s not that I don’t want to…’ He paused. ‘It’s just important that my identity stays a secret… and…’

Marinette could feel him hesitate. She waited, heart thudding in her chest. She could understand his fears. She wouldn’t want anyone to find out that she was Ladybug, either; not only for her personal sake, but also because it would give Hawkmoth an advantage.

‘I, um…’ Chat cleared his throat. ‘It feels wrong to hide things from you.’

That wasn’t at all what she’d expected him to say. ‘Hide things?’

‘Well… My identity.’

She sighed softly, reaching up to touch his cheek. ‘I don’t need to know your identity, Chat,’ she said. ‘Not knowing who you are under the mask doesn’t matter to me.’

He let out a nervous laugh. ‘Yeah, I guess you’d just pretend that I was Adrien Agreste anyway, huh?’

Marinette bit down on her bottom lip. ‘Does that disturb you?’

‘No,’ he hurried to say, ‘not at all.’ He sighed. ‘It’s just that you don’t have the whole truth, and it feels like I’m taking advantage of that.’

 _If you only knew,_ she thought in irony, _that the girl you imagined kissing was the one you held in your arms all along. If you only knew what a huge secret I was keeping from you. I should be the one feeling bad, not you._

‘I’m a superhero,’ he continued. ‘And the fact that I know who you are but you don’t know who I am… It makes us unequal. I don’t want to abuse my power.’

Marinette shook her head. ‘Whoever you are, you’re just a teenage boy with blond hair and green eyes, and probably a really kind one, too. I doubt you’re keeping some dark identity from me.’ She bit down a smile. ‘Unless you’re Hawkmoth, but I always imagined him to be in his mid-forties.’

Chat let out an amused breath. ‘I guess you’re right.’

‘You know we can stop this anytime, Chat.’

His hands slid up to her waist. ‘If you want this, I want this,’ he assured her, then hurried to add, ‘and with “this”, I don’t mean anything in particular, just, y’know, doing whatever we feel like.’

Marinette rested her hands against his leather-clad chest and started planting soft kisses on his neck. _He smells so good,_ she groaned inwardly. ‘I want this,’ she whispered.

Chat squirmed beneath her. ‘Claws in,’ he breathed.

And suddenly, the leather disappeared, exchanged for soft fabric. An exhilarated thrill rumbled inside her body. She bunched up the fabric in her hands. _Clothes. Regular clothes. Removable clothes._

Her hands moved up to his cheeks, carefully probing his face with her fingers, and finding no mask. Next, his hair, which was free from cat ears. She ran her fingers through it. ‘Oh my god,’ she whispered.

At those three words, Chat’s patience seemed to run out, because he raised his head to reach her lips with hers, and then his arms wrapped around her to pull her flush against his chest. A moment later, his hands slid up beneath her shirt; hot, decisive fingers splayed out across her naked back, then moved further up, pulling the shirt up with them. Marinette’s own hands roamed the body of the now de-transformed Chat, marvelling at each centimetre of skin she could find. Her fingers dug their way inside of his shirt, and when they were met by the faint outlines of abs, she gasped, digging her nails into his stomach.

He groaned, deepening the kiss, and her head was swimming, and her body was _burning,_ and he was pulling her shirt over her head and she helped him, and then what had started out as a tentative kiss transformed into something that could only be described as a hot and desperate wrestling match. Suddenly _she_ was lying on her back while pretend-Adrien kissed her like she was a croissant and he was starving, and she locked her legs around his back, giving him free access to the insides of her thighs. His fingers sent jolts of scorching electricity through her body as they slid further up, all the way to the edge of her shorts. Marinette dug her fingers into his hair, pushing his head towards her, and they were kissing with open mouths now, panting into each other. Then pretend-Adrien’s fingers slid inside of her shorts.

Marinette gasped, her back arching as much as it possibly could with the body of a hot teenage boy on top of her. He pulled away from her mouth for a moment.

‘Okay?’ he breathed. She responded by pulling him to her again.

His fingers teased right by the edge of her panties, running their way up along the fabric. She wanted him to touch her so much she could scream, but she settled for moving her hands to his forearm, trying to push him further up and into her panties. But she wasn’t Ladybug now, and he was a fit teenage boy, which meant that he had no trouble resisting her power. She groaned impatiently.

‘Please,’ she mumbled against his lips, but it would be a miracle if he heard what she said. He pulled back again, withdrew his fingers and sat up. Marinette was about to complain, but then it sounded like he removed his shirt, and _fine, do that, just come back down here as soon as it’s off._

He did, and when his naked torso and arms returned to her own naked skin, another jolt rushed through her spine. To her satisfaction, he then started fumbling with the button on her shorts. It popped open, and she helped him pull the shorts down, kicking them off completely when they reached her shins. Then they crossed into another strange wrestling session, rolling around on top of the covers, each one fighting for the top spot.

Pretend-Adrien lost—though Marinette was pretty sure he let her win—and so she straddled him victoriously, unable to see but ultra sensitive to every little move he made beneath her. He bucked up against her, allowing her to feel just how hard he was, and forcing a surprised gasp out of her. _Oh, two can play that game._

Sitting up straight, she started grinding against him—this time very much conscious of what she was doing—and relished hearing him groan and feeling him grip her hips.

‘Please don’t stop,’ he whimpered.

To be honest, she wasn’t planning to. But before she could go on, she needed to get rid of the stupid extra layer of clothes between them. While leaning forward to kiss him, she started fumbling with the buttons on his jeans, groaning impatiently when she failed to loosen them.

‘Help?’ she mumbled against his lips, and pretend-Adrien came to the rescue. He flicked all buttons loose in a matter of moments. Marinette then left his lips to assist him in pushing the jeans off, hooking her fingers around the belt loops and tugging almost desperately. When they reached her knees, she decided that she’d undressed him enough, and took place over his hips again.

The feeling of his bulge pressing up between her thighs made her gasp out loud. There was still the fabric of their underwear between them, but those layers were so thin that they could just as well have been non-existent. When his dick twitched against her, she had to dig her fingers into her sheets to keep herself in some semblance of control.

Slowly, she started moving against him again, and her breathing quickly sped up, reaching its previous pace in an instant. Pretend-Adrien let out an almost pained moan that made her blood boil. She wished that she could have seen his face. _But it wouldn’t be Adrien’s face,_ she reminded herself. _It would be the face of a stranger._

She couldn’t think about that now—she _literally_ couldn’t, because now pretend-Adrien started moving, too, syncing up with her movements to push up between her thighs. She moaned loudly before throwing her hands over her mouth. Beneath her, she heard a sharp intake of breath.

‘Shit,’ pretend-Adrien panted. She stilled, but he squeezed her hips harder in response. ‘No,’ he groaned, ‘please.’

Marinette felt a sharp blush spread across her face and body. ‘I—I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep quiet,’ she whispered.

Pretend-Adrien shuddered beneath her. ‘Can we change position again?’

She nodded. ‘Yeah.’

* * *

Adrien pulled Ladybug!Marinette flush against his chest, then moved so that he was on top. He supported himself on his elbows on either side of her for a moment as he kicked his jeans off the rest of the way. ‘You don’t have to be quiet,’ he reassured her, placing a soft kiss on her neck. ‘Just trust me.’

Then he pushed his hips into hers, slowly but decisively, and she responded by letting out a long moan, prompting Adrien to cover her mouth with his. He pulled his hips back, then pushed again. This time, her moan was swallowed by his kiss, mingling with his own moan and their tongues and reverberating through their bodies.

He pulled back—then pushed into her again. Her next moan was even louder than before, and with every push, with every grind against her, she only grew louder. _Holy hell, she wasn’t kidding..._ After a particularly protracted moan, Adrien stopped moving and left her lips. Without thinking, he opened his eyes. What he saw almost made his heart stop.

On the mattress below him was his Ladybug, wearing only her underwear and a blindfold. Her head was leaned back so that her throat was completely exposed to him, showing him the hickey he’d given her the day before, and her lips were parted in a silent moan. As he watched her, she released her hold of his waist and extended her arms up above her head on the bed, stretching her whole body beneath him. He bit his lip in an attempt to keep his groan in, but it slipped out anyway as her hips bucked up into his.

‘Ladybug,’ he breathed, and he was just about to close his eyes and return to his ministrations when he caught sight of something out of the corner of one eye.

Adrien froze.

_Is that…_

It was.

On a pin board right next to the bed, Marinette had pinned up three things: a class schedule, a picture of the colour spectrum, and a photograph of _him._

And it wasn’t any photograph, either; it was one of the photographs that Chloe had made him sign the day before, that she had taken on him during the fashion show. It was a photograph of him covered in glitter, perfectly posed at the end of the runway, smirking like he owned the world.

And just like that, Adrien was pulled out of his fantasy.

He looked back at Marinette in panic. _I’m taking advantage of her. She doesn’t know it’s me. She has a signed photograph of me right next to her bed, and she has no idea I’m also currently_ in _her bed, and she’s my friend, and I shouldn’t do this to her, and oh god—_

‘Chat?’

Marinette reached up to remove her blindfold, but his hands caught hers before she could. ‘Still here, very de-transformed and very secret,’ he laughed nervously.

She started chewing on her bottom lip. _Don’t. Do. That._ ‘Are you… okay?’

‘Yeah, yeah,’ he hurried to tell her, running a hand through his hair as he tried to think of something clever to say. He was drawing a blank. ‘I, um…’

His heart was racing hard and fast in his chest, and his vision was blurring. _What’s happening to me…?_

Marinette seemed to sense that something was going on, because she grabbed hold of his biceps—which he now noticed were trembling—and held him steadily above her.

‘Chat, please, talk to me,’ she pleaded. ‘You’re shaking. Do you feel faint? I knew I should have made you eat more than just a croissant and a tiny piece of baguette—’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, grateful for the excuse she’d just given him, ‘I don’t know, I just got this weird dizzy spell all of a sudden…’

Marinette was already crawling out from beneath him, and he sat up to give her more space as she fumbled her way out of bed. When she had her back to him, she tore off the blindfold and grabbed a pink robe that hung over the back of a nearby chair.

‘You want me to fetch you something else to eat?’ she asked. ‘Maybe if you have another croissant—’

‘I think I should leave,’ Adrien heard himself say. He glanced at the signed photograph again, wincing. _I’ve screwed up big time._

And his heart just wouldn’t calm down; neither would his breathing. His lungs felt tight, like something was squeezing him together.

‘Oh,’ Marinette said. Even from behind, he could see her fiddling with the collar of her robe. ‘Okay.’

 _I’m so, so sorry,_ Adrien thought anxiously. _I should never have come here a second time, and definitely not a third._

She was crushing on him. Marinette was—without a doubt—crushing on Adrien, and she was crushing _hard._ He just couldn’t justify what he was doing. If she found out who Chat Noir really was, she would probably never forgive him.

While Marinette stood frozen by the foot of the bed, Adrien quickly gathered up his clothes and pulled them on. Jeans, check… Shirt, check… Had he taken anything else off? Nothing that he could remember.

‘Will you… Will you text me when you’re home, so I know you’re okay?’

Adrien paused. Text her? But then…

He should have put a stop to it right then and there. He should have told her no, should have escaped before she could ask any more questions, but something in him considered her question.

_Maybe… Just so she won’t have to worry…_

‘Sure,’ he heard himself say. ‘What’s your number?’

* * *

After he got back home, the first thing Adrien did was to rummage through his closet for the second phone he _knew_ he should still have somewhere… and he found it in the back corner, hidden in a sock in a shoe box under three bags and a pile of old video game cartridges.

The phone was still intact and would probably work if he tried to boot it up, but it wasn’t the machine itself he was interested in.

It was the SIM card.

The phone he used was dual-SIM, which meant he would be able to use both SIM cards in one phone and change between them at his leisure.

While he rebooted his phone with two SIM cards inserted, he couldn’t help but think of Marinette and what they’d almost done tonight. It had been amazing; he’d really been sucked into his own fantasy, almost like it was actually Ladybug who writhed beneath him. But he couldn’t keep doing this to Marinette. Not when he knew what she felt about him; about Adrien.

If she was as enamoured with him as he was with Ladybug, he couldn’t justify moving on with this… this _deal_ that they’d come up with.

But to send her a text message or two, just to reassure her, that was something else entirely.

So when the phone had finally booted up and he was able to access the second SIM card, he added Marinette’s number into its phone book and started typing up a harmless message.

**_> I’m alive! Still weak but safely inside my bedroom.  <_ **

Enough minutes passed before he got her reply, that he had just accepted the fact that she was probably asleep, when his phone’s screen at last lit up with a new text message.

**> Take care, kitty.  <**

His heart fluttered.

_Damn Marinette and her damn pigtails._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I *just* finished chapter 6 today, so I'll be able to post that according to schedule. Going to start working on chapter 7 *now*, so we'll see how far I get on that today. I won't have a lot of time to write during this week, which is why I'm hoping I'll be able to finish as much as possible today. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, the schedule may be a little fucked up this week, but hopefully not too much.
> 
> Until next time, when Marinette tortures Adrien via text - and he finds that he doesn't mind.


	6. Chocolate

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes:  
> \- more teasing,  
> \- more croissants,  
> \- more Ladybug,  
> \- more Miraculous, and  
> \- less angst.

**> Had a REAL tasty croissant for breakfast this morning.  <**

**> _I believe u. And also am extremely jealous._ <**

**> Fresh from the oven. When I split it in half I got chocolate everywhere…  <**

**_> It was filled with CHOCOLATE???  <_ **

**> The keyword being “was”  <**

**> So much chocolate going to waste just because I was being clumsy :c  <**

**_> I mean… u didn’t lick it off?  <_ **

**> …lick it off? Some of us aren’t literal cats, u know  <**

‘Dude, you’re gonna break your face if you keep grinning like that every time you look at your phone.’

Adrien looked up from the screen with an apologetic smile. ‘Sorry, Nino. I’ll put it away.’

His friend stopped him as he made a move to tuck his phone into his pants pocket. ‘That depends,’ Nino said with a wiggle of his eyebrows, ‘on the subject of your attention.’

Adrien flushed. ‘I, uh… guess you wouldn’t believe me if I said “memes”?’

Nino gave him a deadpan look.

_Nope, apparently not._

‘Okay, okay,’ Adrien said, glancing from left to right to make sure no one else was listening. ‘It’s a girl.’

‘I KNEW IT! Alya told me it couldn’t be, but I just _knew_ there had to be someone.’

Adrien raised his eyebrows. ‘Alya said that?’

Nino shrugged. ‘Don’t ask me.’

Adrien’s phone vibrated in his hand. He gave Nino a hesitant look.

‘Go ahead,’ his friend said with a grin.

He made sure to angle the screen away so Nino wouldn’t see what Marinette had written. And when he saw the message, he was immensely grateful to himself for having taken the precaution.

**> Besides, I’d like to see u lick chocolate off your own collarbones…  <**

Just like that, all blood in his body rushed to one single place, and he had to cough to disguise his sharp intake of breath. She might not have meant it as the innuendo he interpreted it to be, but she _definitely_ knew what she was doing. And he wasn’t about to let her get away with it.

**_> Ur right… u should have asked me to do it for u  <_ **

He’d _tried_ to stay away from Marinette, really, he had, but it turned out that texting with her as Chat Noir without accidentally letting the conversation slip into less innocent territories had been… hard. And she wasn’t exactly helping.

**> Well... I’m all cleaned up now, but there are more croissants where that one came from  <**

‘Sour cream and onion, or sweet and sour?’

Adrien reluctantly tore his gaze away from the screen to face Nino, who was just grabbing two bags of chips from the jam-packed shelves of potato snacks and now turned to hold them both up for his friend to choose between.

‘You know I can’t eat any of those,’ Adrien reminded him. Nino rolled his eyes.

‘Oh come on, you don’t have to eat the whole bag. Besides, your dad won’t know, won’t he?’

Adrien grimaced. ‘I hate to let you down, but I’d rather use the calories I’m allowed for something a little more nutritious.’

_… like a chocolate croissant._

‘You know, your diet is really starting to freak me out.’

‘It’s not that bad,’ Adrien argued. ‘As long as I stay away from snacks.’

Nino sighed and put the bags of chips back on the shelf. ‘Fine. No snacks. But I’m blaming you if I get cranky in an hour or so.’

Adrien snickered. ‘Deal.’

While Nino was busy sulking, Adrien quickly typed a reply into the chat window.

**_> With your clumsiness I bet there’ll be plenty more opportunities to get dirty ;)  <_ **

‘So who is she?’

He looked up again, his cheeks rosy. ‘Hm?’

Nino rolled his eyes. ‘The girl. On that screen you’ve glued your eyes to?’

‘Oh.’ Adrien gave a nervous smile as he scratched the back of his neck. ‘She’s, um… another model.’

It wasn’t an obvious lie. There _had_ been the occasional fling with girls from work in the past, and Nino knew all about that.

‘Sick.’ Nino shook his head with a sigh. ‘You live a sick life, my dude.’ He veered into another isle. ‘Not that I’m jealous. I wouldn’t exchange Alya for any model girl in the world.’

Adrien smiled. ‘And trust me, I’d rather have an Alya of my own than another frivolous fling, but girls like that don’t exactly grow on trees.’

‘Amen to that.’

And when it came to girls like Ladybug… Well, those didn’t seem to grow on trees either, but apparently Adrien had managed to find the only girl in Paris who could even begin to compare to the polka-dotted superhero. And it just so happened that the girl in question was willing to let him pretend that she was the girl of his dreams.

 _Maybe “willing” isn’t the right word…_ “Eager” seemed more in line with reality.

**> I’d planned to eat another tonight… But idk if I feel like making a mess of myself again just for some chocolate. It might not be worth it…  <**

**_> I think I have an idea of how to make it worth ur while  <_ **

**> I’m listening  <**

He stopped walking and leaned his shoulder against the nearest shelf. _This girl…_ He never would have guessed that Marinette, sweet Marinette of all people, would be this much of a tease. What was the right thing to do here? It wasn’t like he was really taking advantage of her; she clearly wanted this. Sure, she thought she was flirting with Chat Noir and not with Adrien, but did it really make a difference? Behind the blindfold, and between the sheets, did it really matter whether she was pinned to her mattress by Chat or by Adrien?

Did it really matter whether it was him or other him who sucked and licked and kissed the chocolate off her skin?

A loud crash a couple of isles over tore him from his thoughts. His muscles tensed, ready to react to whatever was going on in the store.

‘You think you can fire ME?’ A laugh—or more like a cackle—echoed among the walls. ‘I QUIT!’

Another crash, this one more protracted, and then screams. _Akuma. It must be an Akuma._ Adrien quickly located Nino. He was standing on the other side of the isle, looking around confusedly. Adrien was just about to run up to him when the cackle returned even closer than before, and the shelves to his left suddenly started falling towards him. He widened his eyes. _With this speed, and Nino’s location…_ It would leave Nino out of harm. The same couldn’t be said for himself.

With a grunt, he leapt to the side, just barely avoiding to be smashed beneath a tonne of cans and jars. Nino was running away towards the exit— _good_ —so Adrien went in the other direction, running from the Akuma until he reached the section with frozen goods, which was empty. He crouched down behind the rows of freezers, finding himself eye to eye with Plagg a second later. The tiny cat god’s teeth were clattering.

‘Y-you c-c-couldn’t find a w-warmer place to t-t-transform?’

‘You’ll thaw in a jiff,’ Adrien assured him. ‘Plagg, claws out!’

He must have transformed at least hundreds of times by now, but the way that Plagg’s magic enveloped him in warm energy and tensed his muscles for battle had never ceased to thrill him. When the green light died out, he was no longer a weak, duteous teenage boy—he was Chat Noir, one of Paris’ two superheroes, with power and courage coursing through his veins.

He took a deep breath, sucking in cool air into his lungs. Then he ran back towards the chaos.

 _Unless Ladybug was hanging out in the same store as I was when the Akuma triggered, I’m going to have to get this under control myself._ While he was at his very best with Ladybug by his side, he’d done this enough times to know that he could easily hold out until she arrived if need be.

He used his staff to vault up on top of a row of shelves still standing, and quickly located the Akumatised victim. She looked almost like a ghost, with her unnaturally pale skin and white, billowing hair and cape. Her body, which was wrapped in a thin, white jump suit in a semi-transparent material, seemed to faze in and out of existence as she walked towards a frightened store manager standing with his back against a checkout desk.

‘For seven years, you and your store have sucked the life out of me,’ she growled, clenching her hands into fists. ‘Now it’s _your_ turn to feel the drain!’

Before Adrien could react, she had leapt forward and grabbed hold of the manager’s shirt, balling the fabric into her fists, and then she leaned forward as if to kiss him. With her face just a few centimetres from his terrified stare, she opened her mouth. In the next second, the manager jerked, opened his own mouth up wide, and started breathing into hers—no, that wasn’t right. He wasn’t breathing into her mouth. She was _sucking_ some kind of weird mist _out of him._

_Definitely time to interject._

In a smooth movement, Adrien jumped down from the shelf and landed right next to the Akuma. Using his staff, he then broke between her and the store manager and shoved her back so hard that she slammed into a shelf full of candy, sending a mix of chocolates and gummy bears and liquorice canes raining down over her. She gritted her teeth.

‘So you’re on _his_ side, huh?’

Adrien, who had already gestured for the manager to hide behind the cash register, nonchalantly placed one hand on his hip while the other leaned his staff against his shoulder. ‘I’m on the side that doesn’t try to steal the souls of the people on the other side.’

The Akuma—Adrien mentally gave her the name “Ghost Girl”—raised one hand in the air, and a strong gust suddenly grabbed hold of him, tugging him towards her. He stumbled awkwardly in an attempt to get away, grasping for the nearest shelf but finding no grip. In the last second, he extended his staff and held it horizontally in front of him, effectively making it impossible for the gust to pull him into the isle between the two tall shelves. When the staff slammed into the shelves, he used the momentum to launch himself up on top of one of them, granting him a furious glare from Ghost Girl below.

‘He fired me! _Me!_ After seven years of squeezing my lungs in this godforsaken hellhole of a place!’

‘Shouldn’t you be grateful he fired you, then?’ he taunted her.

Her eyes flashed. ‘You think I would have stayed for seven years if I had somewhere else to go?’

Another gust was sent his way, but this time, he dodged it easily. ‘There are better ways to deal with a termination than to suck the manager’s soul out.’

‘You’re right,’ she agreed. ‘There are.’

He wasn’t prepared for the forceful blast of air that suddenly shook the shelves he was standing on. Before he could jump away, another wind grabbed him from below and pulled him so violently towards the floor that he smashed into it back first. As he groaned in pain, Ghost Girl took her chance. She stepped over to him and straddled his torso, ordering little gusts of air to pin his hands and feet into the floor. Adrien widened his eyes as she leaned forward with a smirk.

‘I heard cat souls are a delicacy,’ she drawled. When he struggled to get loose, she added, ‘Oh, don’t you worry. You’ll still have eight of your lives left.’

She opened her mouth, and a weird feeling came to life in his chest, pushing upwards and forcing him to part his own lips—

And then something shoved Ghost Girl to the side, and his hands and feet were released, which allowed him to scramble away and get up on his feet with support from a shelf.

‘No one sucks the soul out of my partner on my watch,’ a steady voice called from above, and when he turned his head, he saw Ladybug wearing a confident smile, spinning her yo-yo in the air. His heart jumped.

 _She’s so absolutely breath-taking,_ he thought, catching his staff mid-air as she threw it to him.

Ghost Girl bared her teeth and pushed a new gust of wind towards Ladybug, but she easily dodged it, jumping to the next shelf, and then back when GG changed direction. Adrien watched Ladybug jump and twirl and vault herself between the shelves, back and forth, back and forth, until GG dropped to her knees on the floor, panting.

‘The Akuma,’ Ladybug called to him. ‘Where is it?’

‘I don’t know.’ He watched Ghost Girl get up on her feet again. Before she could send another wind his way, he leapt up to join Ladybug on top of the shelves. ‘I don’t think she’s wearing it.’

Ladybug caught her yo-yo in her hand. ‘Guess we’ll need some help.’ She spun it up into the air. ‘Lucky charm!’

What landed in her hand was a small metal key. She frowned. ‘What am I supposed to do with a key?’

Adrien dodged a gust from below. ‘What does one usually do with a key?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Ha-ha.’

Ghost Girl growled below them. ‘Give me your Miraculous!’

Adrien leapt away to dodge another gust. ‘That one’s getting old.’ He threw Ladybug a look that said, _Distract her_ , then jumped to the next shelf, and then the next and the one after that, in search of the Akumatised item. As he ran, he heard Ladybug taunt GG behind him.

‘A little wind? Is that all you’ve got?’

 _If I had just been fired, what item would I be holding when the Akuma got to me?_ The answer came to him like a bolt from a blue sky. His eyes scanned the room for a door. He found one nearby the cash registers which said, “Personnel only”.

_Jackpot._

Adrien turned to search for Ladybug’s figure. He could see her do a cartwheel on top of a shelf some distance away, skilfully dodging a whirl of cans that whooshed through the air.

‘Ladybug!’ he shouted. ‘The key!’

Without demanding any explanations, she threw the key up in the air, then used her yo-yo to launch it towards him in break-neck speed. He caught it in one fist, turned around and leapt off the shelf. As he pushed the key into the lock of the personnel door, he exhaled a sigh in relief. _It fits._

How Ladybug’s Miraculous would know to conjure a key that fit the lock of a door in the vicinity was beyond him, but he wasn’t about to complain.

The door hid a dressing room, just like he’d guessed, and it was filled with rows of lockers. He tried a few, but all of them were locked. _Now what?_ He couldn’t use cataclysm on all of them; he’d only have one shot.

He was growing impatient, knowing that Ladybug was fighting out there alone and that she would soon transform back, so he ran a lap around the room, trying to find _any_ sign that one specific locker belonged to Ghost Girl.

Then, like a gift from above, he saw it.

One locker looked as though it had been violently closed the last time it was used. The edges were bumped and worn, more-so than any of the other lockers.

‘Cataclysm!’

With a single sweep of his arm, the whole row of lockers disintegrated before him, leaving only its contents dropping to the floor. He started digging in the remains from what he believed to be Ghost Girl’s locker, and soon found what he was looking for—a nameplate that said, “Lola Droit, Assistant Cashier Manager”.

There was no time for dallying. He had to trust his instincts. So he took the nameplate and ran out of the room, jumping up onto the nearest shelves and then leaping back towards where he’d last seen Ladybug. The room had gone eerily silent, but he didn’t allow himself to worry. _She’s fine. She’s always fine._

When he reached the chaotic battlefield, after he’d scanned the rows and rows of fallen shelves, he found Ladybug struggling with GG on the floor. One of her hands and both of her legs were pinned down by strong gusts of wind, but she still had one hand free, and as GG leaned forward to give her a Dementor’s kiss, Ladybug’s fingers flexed towards her yo-yo, which had landed just out of reach beside them.

Adrien took the nameplate in both hands and ripped it clean in half.

Ghost Girl immediately started screaming, releasing her hold of the gusts that held Ladybug in place on the floor, and just as the small butterfly revealed itself from the remains of the nameplate, Ladybug gripped her yo-yo. Sure in aim, she launched it towards the butterfly and caught it on the first try, cleansing the little insect with a few whispered words. Adrien watched as she then threw the yo-yo into the air.

‘Miraculous Ladybug!’

He closed his eyes, revelling in the warmth of Ladybug’s magic as it swept through the room, removing all traces of the battle, putting everything back in place on their respective shelves and even repairing the nameplate in Adrien’s hands.

When he opened his eyes again, it was like nothing had ever happened. Lola was sitting on the floor, staring at her empty hands. Adrien dropped to the floor and gave her the nameplate.

‘Here,’ he said, softly. ‘I know you’ll find another job.’

She peered up at him with a sigh. ‘Even after making a complete ruckus at my last workplace? I wouldn’t think so.’

Ladybug crouched down to place a hand on Lola’s shoulder. ‘It wasn’t your fault. The people of Paris know enough about Akumas to understand that you didn’t want to do any of this.’

Lola looked away. ‘But some part of me did,’ she mumbled.

Ladybug’s earrings beeped four times. She and Adrien exchanged a look.

‘I’ll take care of her,’ he said. ‘Go before you transform back.’

She nodded gratefully before launching herself away with her yo-yo and disappearing out of sight behind the tall shelves.

* * *

After answering a few quick questions asked by the press outside the store, Adrien made a rapid exit, rounding the nearest corner into a side alley.

‘Claws—’

‘Chat!’

Adrien stumbled over his own feet as he hurriedly threw his hands over his mouth, but no, he was still Chat Noir. _Was that… Ladybug’s voice?_ At first, he thought he saw his polka-dotted partner in front of him in the alley, but then his brain caught up.

‘Marinette!’ he exclaimed in disbelief. ‘What are _you_ doing here?’

Marinette drew for air, and he realized that she was out of breath, as if she’d been running.

‘I wanted to make sure you were okay,’ she panted. ‘I was in the area, and I heard all the crashes, and then I realised there was an Akuma—’

His ring gave two angry beeps, reminding him that his time was limited. They both eyed it.

‘I’m fine,’ he assured her, then was about to continue with “Ladybug showed up”, but for some reason, he stopped himself.

Marinette nodded. She placed her palm against the brick wall beside her, leaning against it for support, and took a couple of deep breaths.

‘I don’t know why you wouldn’t be… You always land on your feet…’

Adrien couldn’t have stopped his grin even if he wanted to. ‘Was that a cat pun?’

She huffed an amused breath. ‘I guess it was.’

His ring beeped again.

‘I, uh… have some time left. Do you want a ride home?’

Marinette looked away, but gave a short nod. ‘That would be nice.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join us next time, when we get MOOORE SIIIIIN >:D


	7. Blankets

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marinette begs Chat to make a cat pun.
> 
> ... Oh? Did I forget to mention that there's also ~~SIIIIIIIN~~

As they landed on Marinette’s balcony, Chat’s ring beeped four times. She half expected him to leave as soon as he had put her down, but to her surprise, he opened the skylight door and held it open for her.

‘M’lady,’ he said with a bow. Marinette froze at the sound of his pet name for Ladybug, but when she realised he didn’t mean anything deeper by it, she relaxed again and let out an amused sigh.

‘Thanks,’ she said as she placed one foot on the first step of the ladder. Then she paused and looked up at him. ‘Do you want to come inside?’

‘I would have loved to,’ he said with a smile that could kill more fainthearted girls, ‘but I only have about a minute left before the transformation breaks.’

‘Yeah…’

Marinette hesitated. She knew he was right. She also knew that it was only Saturday morning and he might have other plans. And yet…

Before she’d be able to think too much, Marinette climbed up on the balcony again—to the surprise of a certain cat—and walked up to face him head-on. He gave her a look of curiosity as she grabbed hold of his collar.

But when she pulled him down to her level and pressed her lips against his, the sound he let out was not one of curiosity; it was a small sound, almost a sob, and for a second it made her worry that she’d gone too far. She started pulling away, but he let go of the skylight door, letting it slam closed beside them, and wrapped his arms around her tightly. At the same time, his lips parted hers with a sigh, and all her doubts flew out the metaphorical window.

 _He wants this,_ she thought dizzily, _he wants this enough to risk—_

Chat’s ring beeped five times in a row, and then his leather suit disappeared. Marinette held her breath, but he didn’t move, didn’t tense, didn’t do anything except kiss her. She gasped when she realised he wasn’t about to stop. _Not only does he want to kiss me enough to risk revealing his identity, he also trusts me not to take a peek._

Riled up by this fact, she started exploring his body, moaning softly when he deepened their kiss. His tongue was insistent, eager, but not intrusive, and his own hands—now leather-free—slid further down along her back, teasing the waistband of her jeans. She’d decided to wear regular pants instead of shorts today, but suddenly she regretted that decision as pretend-Adrien’s hands clasped her hips in a firm grip.

 _I need to get him inside,_ she thought, _so I can undress him and get rid of my stupid pants and push him down into the bed and…_

Pretend-Adrien’s mouth left hers, but only to press hot lips against her jaw, alternating between soft pecks and full-blown kisses with tongue and everything as he worked his way down to her neck.

‘I want you,’ he murmured against her skin, and it sent a jolt through her spine. She gasped, practically melting in his arms as he nibbled at her throat. ‘I want you so badly.’

The last part was more of a growl than anything else, and Marinette could relate, oh god, could she relate, because she was so hot she was about to burst, and she wanted nothing more than for pretend-Adrien to tear off her clothes and _take her._

But the skylight door was too closed and Marinette too impatient, and so she came up with an idea that was at once both reckless and exciting.

‘T-there are blankets,’ she breathed, rolling her eyes back when his lips reached her collarbones.

‘Mm-hm?’

‘In the b-basket, behind you.’

She couldn’t get them, because if she opened her eyes, she would see him. But _he_ could bring out the blankets, and he finally seemed to realise that, because he pulled away from her, letting his fingers brush against her closed eyes in a silent reminder, and then she heard him open the lid of the braided basket. He seemed to lay one blanket out on the floor, and then he returned to her, wrapping another around her shoulders and pulling her back into his arms. He gave her another kiss—a deep, _wanting_ kiss that made her toes curl—before carefully guiding her down onto the blanket on the floor, making sure that the blanket around her shoulders spread to cover both of them as they lied down.

While pretend-Adrien returned to her lips once again, Marinette went to work on the buttons on his jeans. She managed it much better and faster this time, and soon, her fingers could slide inside of his pants, inside of his underwear, and grab hold of him.

The transformation was instantaneous. The boy groaned and buried his face in her neck, gasping as she moved her hand back and forth along him. She drew for air. _Not so cocky now, huh?_

‘Mmh,’ he mumbled against her skin as Marinette continued to stroke him. For a moment, all he could do seemed to be to lie beside her like a vegetable, giving out little whimpers and groans in response to her touches. But then something happened. He pushed her down on her back, and while she struggled to continue what she was doing, he unbuttoned her own jeans, tugged them down to her knees, and let his hand slide up along the inside of her thighs. She gasped loudly when his fingers grazed the edge of her panties.

She heard him draw for breath, felt him grip her thigh. ‘Do you think you can stay quiet?’ he teased, but his voice trembled.

‘No,’ she admitted breathlessly.

He chuckled—almost giggled—against her neck, and the sound didn’t prepare her at all for what he did next.

Releasing her thigh, he let his fingers climb further up along her leg, and when they reached her panties this time, they slipped inside.

‘Ahh,’ she exclaimed, bucking into his touch. She followed up with a loud moan as his fingers found what they were looking for, leading pretend-Adrien to clasp his free hand over her mouth.

‘Jesus,’ he breathed in disbelief. ‘Did I break you?’

She protested loudly against his hand.

‘I’m going to remove my hand,’ he said, ‘because I want you to tell me if you need me to stop, but if you make too much noise, I’m going to have to cover your mouth again. Okay?’

Marinette nodded. He removed his hand.

‘Don’t stop,’ she breathed immediately, ‘ _please_.’

He exhaled a trembling breath against her neck. ‘All right.’

Pretend-Adrien slowly started moving his fingers again, and Marinette struggled to keep her mouth shut. It worked for a while, but then he carefully pushed one finger inside of her, twisting it around in some magical way that made her completely unable to stay silent. She moaned loudly, leaning her head back against the cold floor in satisfaction, and of course, pretend-Adrien had no choice but to cover her mouth again—but this time, he did it with his own mouth.

She angled herself so that she could touch him again, and when her fingers wrapped around his dick, he gasped into her mouth, his fingers stilling for just a few seconds before he regained his senses again.

As her movements sped up, so did his, until their kisses dissolved into a tangled mess of moans and gasps and lip bites and breathless whispers along the lines of, _“you feel so good”_ and _“don’t stop”_ and, finally, _“I’m coming”_. And then Marinette’s climb reached the edge, and she came loudly and violently, her entire body pulsating hotly; and through her absolute, disgusting bliss, she felt a shudder go through pretend-Adrien’s body, and in the next second, irregular gasps left his mouth as his dick spasmed in Marinette’s hand. Somehow, she had presence enough to find his mouth, and he responded by joining his tongue with hers, swallowing her uncontrolled moans as they rolled out from the deepest parts of her. His fingers cramped up for a moment again while he came, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind at all, because all she could feel and smell and see in her mind’s eye was a beautiful, panting Adrien who lost all control in her arms and in her hand; she could imagine him scrunching his face up and parting his lips and looking god-awful _delicious_ while he came, because that was what his amazing moans and gasps made it sound like.

When the glorious storm had calmed down, she felt him relax beside her.

‘Wow,’ he breathed.

Marinette could only agree. She was super drowsy, but hell if she hadn’t just had the sexiest experience of her life so far. ‘You’re the one who’s wow,’ she told him.

‘Maybe we’re both wow, then,’ he suggested.

Then he seemed to remember that she wasn’t wearing a blindfold, because he reached up to cover her eyes. ‘ _Merde_ ,’ he breathed.

‘I didn’t look, I swear,’ she said between breaths.

‘I believe you, I just… It’s not the smartest thing I’ve done.’ He paused and gave a low chuckle. ‘And not just that, I mean, we’re lying under a thin blanket on a wide-open balcony, and I’m pretty sure the whole of Paris now knows how you sound when you come.’

‘What about you?’ she retorted with a blush.

He placed a soft kiss on her collarbone. ‘I’m nowhere near as loud as you are, princess.’

She sighed and snuggled into his neck, smiling when he pulled her closer into his embrace. _This is nice._ She knew he wasn’t Adrien, and he never would be, but even when he wasn’t pretend-Adrien in her mind, he was kind and caring and warm. She could get used to this thing.

Which reminded her…

‘Should we talk about what we are to each other?’ she murmured against his skin. He took a moment to answer.

‘You want a label?’

‘Not a label, per se,’ she hurried to say, ‘but don’t you think we should make sure that we’re on the same level?’

‘… That sounds like a good idea. But maybe we should go inside first?’

Marinette gave a nervous laugh. ‘Yeah, of course.’

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, when they’d both cleaned themselves up and Chat had transformed again, they seated themselves in her bedroom—Chat on the chaise lounge, Marinette on her desk chair—to stare at each other.

… Well, that wasn’t what they were _supposed_ to be doing, but it seemed like neither of them knew what to say, and neither of them wanted to be the first one to talk. So instead, they just waited awkwardly for the other to say something.

Marinette looked away when she felt a blush coming on. _Come on, this is ridiculous. It’s just Chat! Just silly old Chat Noir._

Just silly old Chat Noir, who had made her moan her bliss into the sky just a short moment earlier.

‘Do you think you could…’ She took a deep breath. ‘… make a dumb pun or something?’

Chat raised his eyebrows, but then a smirk warmed his lips. ‘You **feline** nervous, **purr-incess**?’

Marinette felt her shoulders relax. ‘Thanks. So, we’ve gathered here today to decide the rules for our little rough-and-tumble. Any opening remarks?’

His smirk remained. ‘Oh, yes. I’d like to start by saying that you look **paws-itively** stunning in that confidence of yours.’

She gave him a glare. ‘You can stop the puns now.’

‘You let the wrong cat out of the bag.’

 _Sigh._ ‘Okay, then _I’ll_ start.’ She cleared her throat. ‘I think one rule should obviously be that you never reveal your identity, and I don’t try to sneak a peek or otherwise force you to reveal it.’

He nodded. ‘No identity reveals, check. At least not on **purr-pose**.’

 _Just ignore him,_ she told herself. ‘Rule number two, no feelings. This is purely physical.’ She eyed his tight leather suit. _HIGHLY physical._

Thankfully, Chat didn’t seem to notice how she ogled him. ‘Agreed,’ he said. ‘But, suppose that one of us—theoretically, mind you— _did_ develop feelings for the other. What would we do then?’

‘Stop seeing each other, obviously,’ Marinette replied matter-of-factly.

He nodded slowly. ‘Obviously.’

‘No one is supposed to get hurt,’ she continued. ‘So no feelings.’ She thought for a moment. ‘Can you think of any other rules?’

Chat pulled his legs up beneath him as he thought. ‘No running into danger for you.’

Marinette scoffed in disbelief. ‘Excuse me?’

‘Leave the Akuma fighting to me and Ladybug. I don’t want to see you nearby an Akuma again.’

‘What does that have to do with _anything_?’

‘You said no one’s supposed to get hurt, didn’t you?’

She narrowed her eyes. _Oh you clever bastard…_ ‘Fine. But I can’t help if I find myself in the middle of an Akuma fight, you know.’

The stupid cat gave her one of his most dazzling smiles. ‘Obviously.’

‘Another rule for you, then: you have to eat regularly. And not just chocolate-filled croissants,’ she added when he opened his mouth to answer.

‘I do eat regularly,’ he said in a serious voice. ‘That night was an outlier and should not be counted.’

‘Then you won’t have any trouble following rule 4,’ she said.

Chat’s eyes gleamed. ‘Touché.’

‘Anything else?’

‘Nope. Not right now. What about you?’

She considered it for another moment. ‘Not that I can think of.’

‘Great.’ Chat got up from the chaise lounge, stretching out his body like the cat he was. ‘I really would have loved to stay longer, but I actually had plans today.’

Marinette bit down on her bottom lip. ‘Oh…’ _If I’d known, I wouldn’t have kept you here._

Chat paused on his way to the door, eyes glued to her lips. ‘When… when do we meet again? What’s the rule there?’

She hadn’t thought about that. When _should_ they meet? It was obvious that they would meet at her place, since he couldn’t reveal his identity, but how often?

She passed the ball back to him. ‘What do you think?’

His gaze left her lips and focused instead on her eyes. ‘I have a really busy schedule, but it never hurts to ask.’ Then his smirk returned. ‘Night-time is less… conspicuous, shall we say?’

Marinette nodded. Even though night-time meant she had to keep her parents and what they would be able to hear in mind, it also meant that there would be less risk for distraction. Akumas rarely hit at night, and neither did Alya.

‘Night-time it is.’

Chat Noir winked and blew her a kiss as he started climbing up to her loft. ‘ _Au revoir,_ _princesse._ ’

Usually, Chat’s flirtation was aimed at Ladybug, and usually, Ladybug was untouched by it. But after what had just happened on the balcony, and after having learned what he could _do_ with his _fingers_ , Marinette found herself blushing hard. She cursed inwardly when she saw how Chat smirked in return before opening up the skylight door and leaving her alone with her thoughts.

* * *

If someone would have told Adrien a month ago that he would soon be casually flirting with Marinette, he would have laughed it off. If that same someone had also told him that he would be _fingering_ her on a _balcony_ in the middle of _daytime,_ and that he wouldn’t even think twice about doing so, he would have called them a lunatic.

But here he was, after doing all of that, and no one was laughing about it.

Then again, he hadn’t really done it as Adrien, had he? Not in Marinette’s eyes, although she might have pretended that he had.

_Ugh, when did things get so complicated?_

‘Dude!’

He looked up as a figure departed from the still large crowd outside of the store that Lola had gone haywire in. Nino smashed into him and wrapped his arms around him before he had fully registered what was happening.

‘Uh, hi?’ Adrien choked out.

His friend pulled back with a frown. ‘I was so worried! Why didn’t you text me earlier?’

Adrien felt a punch of guilt to his gut. _I would have, but…_ Things had sort of… gotten in the way.

‘My phone died,’ he lied with an apologetic smile.

‘Are you OK?’ Nino asked, scanning him from top to bottom. ‘You didn’t get hit by that shelf at all?’

‘I’m fine.’ Then he remembered. ‘And you? Did you manage to escape the store right away?’

‘Yeah. I think most people did. The only one who didn’t were you and that manager, right? Why did you even run in the wrong direction?’

‘Uhh… Temporary loss of brain function?’ he suggested weakly. _That would explain some other things, too…_

‘Well, whatever. You’re here now.’ Nino groaned. ‘And I’m _starving._ ’ He looked around, eyes coming to life when he saw the McDonald’s restaurant on the other side of the street. ‘Duuuude.’

Adrien raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘McDonald’s?’ He was about to protest, but then he remembered rule number 4. With a sigh, he said, ‘Sure.’

‘Yeah!’ Nino pumped his fist in the air. ‘Not even gonna ask what’s wrong with you. I’ll take it!’

With an amused smile, Adrien followed his friend as he ran across the street in childish glee.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come back next time, when Adrien is a naughty child.


	8. Teeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Puns and flirting galore!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was getting loooooong (hence the late update), so I split it in two. :)) 
> 
> (Side note - when I googled "Chat Noir" earlier today because I needed to study his outfit in detail, I FOUND OUT THAT THERE'S A STRIP CLUB FAIRLY CLOSE TO WHERE I LIVE THAT'S CALLED JUST THAT!)
> 
> Ahem. Enjoy ~

For every day that passed, and every night that Chat dropped down at Marinette’s balcony, Adrien found it easier and easier to rationalise the fact that he was lying to one of his best friends.

She _obviously_ enjoyed what they were doing. It wasn’t like he was hurting her. Besides, he couldn’t give her Adrien anyway—his heart belonged to Ladybug, so it was either Chat or nothing. It was a win-win situation for both of them.

Also… it was _really_ fun to watch Marinette squirm as Alya peppered her with questions about her “secret lover”.

‘I can’t believe you’ve been able to keep them a secret for several weeks now!’ Alya exclaimed in frustration as Marinette dodged yet another potential reveal about whom she was seeing.

‘It’s no one special,’ Marinette said with a shrug.

‘Then why can’t you tell us?’

Adrien watched in amusement from behind his drink as the girls bickered. While he did feel a little bad for Marinette’s sake, he couldn’t help finding pleasure in seeing her so bothered over Chat. It wasn’t just that she was afraid to reveal something to Alya and the others; she apparently became honest-to-god _flustered_ when thinking about him. He knew she didn’t feel anything for Chat—that was rule number 2, after all—but to see how he affected her even when he wasn’t even there with her was mind-blowing.

Alya elbowed him in his side. ‘Hey, lover boy,’ she winked. ‘Why so smug?’

_Busted._

‘Ah, n-nothing. It’s just, I’m going to miss this.’

She wrapped an arm around his shoulders. ‘Aw, come on, it’s just a summer break. Besides, we’ll get even more time to hang out when there’s no school to worry about.’

Adrien’s smile melted off his lips. ‘Actually…’

All three of his friends turned to look at him. He gave an apologetic smile.

‘I’ll be away for a while. Father is launching our brand abroad, and he wants me to help advertise it.’

‘Abroad?’ Nino asked, shoulders slumped in disappointment. ‘Where?’

‘North America.’

‘Damn,’ Alya muttered.

Adrien glanced at Marinette to gauge her reaction, but she hid it well. All he discerned was a discreet tug at one corner of her lips and a small frown.

He’d told her as Chat a few days ago, although he’d said then that he’d be going to visit family over the summer. She’d feigned nonchalance, but he had been able to see that she was disappointed.

‘We can still text,’ he had said in an attempt to cheer her up. _Or even call._ But he didn’t say that last part, because it seemed like toeing too close to rule number 2. Their texting had been very… hm, how to phrase it… _to the point_ so far. He could maybe see them stretching their boundaries to talk about more casual things if he was going away for a few months, because Chat and Marinette were friends after all, but to start talking to each other in actual phone calls… That seemed like a huge step, and one that he wasn’t sure he wanted to take.

Marinette had smiled, but it had been a smile devoid of happiness.

‘We can still text,’ she’d confirmed.

Then he’d told Ladybug the next time they met, but it had been right after an Akuma, and so there had been no time for dallying. She had asked one good question though, and that was how she was supposed to deal with Akumas all on her own. He didn’t have an answer to that, except, ‘You’re Ladybug. You can do anything.’

Because he really didn’t have a choice in the matter. He’d tried to make his father change his mind, but Adrien was basically the front figure of Agreste Fashion in Paris—the person who best advertised the brand to a younger audience—and a launch of the brand abroad wouldn’t be as successful if he wasn’t there, front and centre.

‘You’re going to be way too cool for us when you return,’ Alya said dramatically. ‘World Famous Supermodel Adrien Agreste, American Dream and Teen Heartthrob Extraordinaire.’

Adrien laughed. ‘Yeah, right. I’ll probably embarrass myself completely and get disowned by father.’

‘I’m sure you’ll kick ass,’ Marinette surprised him by saying. He turned to her with a careful smile.

‘Maybe if you’re rooting for me, Marinette.’

He might be wrong, but he was fairly sure he could hear Marinette draw for air at his comment. What he was completely sure about was that she bit her lip, because the way he was programmed ensured that he could never miss one of those little lip bites of hers.

Too late, he realised that he was staring. Alya, however, seemed to realise it too early. She didn’t say anything, but she elbowed him again with a smug smile on her lips, and then she winked at Marinette.

Adrien flushed. ‘A-anyway, I’m sure I’ll still be able to keep in touch via text or chat.’

‘Yeah,’ Nino agreed enthusiastically. ‘We’ll figure something out!’

* * *

**> When are u leaving?  <**

**_> Tomorrow morning  <_ **

**> Spend the night with me?  <**

Adrien swallowed as he read Marinette’s latest message. Spend the night with her… Wouldn’t that cross some kind of line?

 _To hell with lines,_ a voice said in his head. _To hell with rules._

… But there were some rules he just couldn’t break.

Before replying, he looked around to make sure that _*he*_ was nowhere to be seen.

**_> If it were up to me, I’d already be there…  <_ **

**_> … but I’m sorta stuck in this last minute thing  <_ **

‘Adrien.’

Faster than a ladybug in battle, Adrien slipped his phone into his back pocket and turned to face the voice.

‘Yes, father?’

Gabriel Agreste, who had once towered over his son, now had only a few centimetres on him. His blue eyes, however, still held the very same sharpness that they had held ever since Adrien’s mother disappeared. He looked at Adrien sternly.

‘You’re not slacking off, are you? We need to make the last adjustments before the trip.’

‘I was just taking a short break,’ Adrien assured him, already walking past his father to get back to work. ‘I’ll get right on it.’

A hand reached out and grabbed hold of his upper arm. Adrien came to a halt, staring at his father’s hand.

‘I’ll make certain Nathalie gets you some food,’ Gabriel said, face unreadable. Adrien could only nod.

The hand disappeared and his father turned away, already steering his steps towards his chambers. When Adrien was sure that he’d left the room, he fished his phone back up to read the two new messages that Marinette had sent him.

 **> That’s too bad** **… <**

**> Ur rly missing smth  <**

He sighed as he pictured Marinette lying on her bed, her dark hair falling in waves over her naked shoulders, with her bottom lip stuck under her teeth and her eyes covered with a blindfold. It had just been a few days ago, but the memory already seemed almost unreal.

 **_> I don’t doubt it, princess_ ** **_… <_ **

With another sigh, he entered the room where some of the best tailors of Agreste Fashion were waiting to get their hands on him.

‘There you are, Mr. Agreste,’ the woman called Amelia said with a smile, pulling at the measuring tape resting around her neck. ‘We just have some final measurements to take.’

Ever the accommodating model, Adrien took his place in front of Amelia and let her order him to take one position after the other. _No different than a photoshoot_ , he noted to himself. _Except I don’t have to bother about what face I’m making._ And that was probably fortunate, because considering how tired he was and how much he just wanted to transform and escape through the nearest window, he probably wasn’t getting any scores in the face department.

Through it all, he felt his phone buzz several times in his back pocket. Eventually, Amelia plucked out his phone with a scowl and placed it on the nearest table. He eyed it longingly as it vibrated.

‘You must be a busy man,’ Amelia remarked.

Adrien didn’t respond, because he didn’t know what to.

One hour later, Adrien finally closed his bedroom door behind himself and staggered over to his bed, falling face-first into the soft mattress. His head spinned, and oh god, the bed was so ridiculously comfy…

‘Yo. Lover boy.’

Adrien didn’t even bother to turn his head. ‘Have you been hanging out with Alya behind my back?’ he muttered against the pillow.

He could practically hear Plagg smirk. ‘What can I say? The name stuck.’

Adrien sighed deeply.

‘Aaaaanyway,’ Plagg continued, ‘you forgot your phone in the parlour, but you’re in luck, because I happen to feel charitable today.’

The phone dropped with a soft thud on the bed next to Adrien’s face. A blue light was blinking above the display, indicating that he had unread messages. _That’s right… Marinette was texting me._

Channelling the part of him that was a normal teenage boy, Adrien supported himself on his elbows so that he could reach the phone. He had five unread text messages… all from “Princess”.

**> So I’ve been thinking…  <**

**> About ur summer trip.  <**

**> U said we could still text… and at first I thought it wouldn’t be the same bc we wouldn’t be able to see each other  <**

**> But then I thought, why wouldn’t we?  <**

**> U ok?  <**

He frowned. What was she up to now?

**_> Sry, dead battery. What do u mean?  <_ **

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Plagg float away to the hidden refrigerator where he stored all the camembert. Adrien peered tiredly at his kwami as he zipped right through the fridge door and disappeared. _Cozy place to spend your night, I guess_ _…?_

He returned his attention to the phone. Three dots on the screen indicated that Marinette was composing a reply. But then the dots disappeared and didn’t reappear again. Adrien was about to send her another message when, suddenly, a picture popped up in the conversation.

 **> I mean** **… <**

**> [IMG]  <**

**> ** **… this <**

Adrien shot straight up like an arrow. It was damn lucky his bedroom had a high ceiling, because otherwise he’d doubtlessly blasted right through it, head-first.

Marinette had sent him a picture, and not just _any_ picture; it was a picture that portrayed her from her lips—which had been painted red—and all the way down to her waist, with her dark hair fanning out on the bed below her. She was biting her lip and twining a strand of hair around her pinky, and—AND!!!—she was wearing a gOD DAMN LADYBUG BRA. O N L Y.

Adrien stared at the picture in shock. Did she already _own_ a bra like that, or had she bought it just for him?

Possible responses flew through his mind, among which “WOW” was one of the _least_ cringey alternatives. Eventually he settled on,

**_> *dead*  <_ **

**> Oops…  <**

**_> I can already see the headlines now…  <_ **

**_> “Teenage boy murdered by bra”  <_ **

**> Well I wouldn’t want that…  <**

**> I’ll remove it for u ;)  <**

“PLEASE DO,” Adrien’s brain screamed. He swallowed. This wasn’t what he had expected. Not what he’d expected at all. Not that he would complain—he was _totally_ up for this. He’d never been more up for anything in his damn life.

… And the same could be said for a certain body part of his.

**_> U know, I think that could be dangerous  <_ **

**> How so…?  <**

**_> U might hurt urself  <_ **

**_> Everyone knows unclasping your own bra is just like playing a reverse game of Russian roulette. U know, u COULD survive, but it’s not probable  <_ **

**> Damn… thanks for warning me  <**

**> What do u suggest I do?  <**

**_> I know someone who could help u  <_ **

**> Really? Who?  <**

**_> There’s this real smooth guy who goes by the name of Chat Noir  <_ **

**_> Apparently he’s an expert at helping pretty girls unclasp their bras  <_ **

**> Sounds like a total perv  <**

**_> Nah, he’s a purr-fessional.  <_ **

**> Uh-huh. Do u know where I can find his credentials?  <**

**_> Lemme check  <_ **

By now, Adrien’s heart was about ready to burst out of his chest, the way it was galloping between his lungs. He took a moment to draw for breath, one two three times, before running a hand through his hair and focusing on the task at hand. _Okay. I’m doing this. I’m really doing this._

He was god damn sending her a nude, and no one and nothing could stop him.

It turned out that taking nudes of himself was nothing at all like just posing in front of a photographer. He’d never been good at taking selfies, and had no idea how to think when composing a picture. His skills lied in knowing how to pose, not in where to aim the camera or what background to use or how much skin to show in your first ever nude.

‘Plagg!’ he exclaimed in frustration.

‘NOPE!’ was the reply from the mini fridge.

Adrien groaned. _I’m overthinking this. It’s just a photo. Just don’t show your face, don’t show too much of your bedroom, and absolutely *don’t* send a dick pic._

He could do this.

Taking a deep breath, he thought back to the pictures on Marinette’s bedroom walls. What was the common denominator in her favourite photographs of Adrien? What about his appearance did she like the most? He needed to replicate those little details without giving her a chance to recognise them.

Then it hit him like a bolt from the blue.

 _The photograph next to her bed._ It was the perfect mixture of Adrien and Chat, and just different enough from the other photos that she shouldn’t be able to draw any dangerous parallels.

He grinned as his thoughts started running wild on how to set it up. _This is going to be fun._

* * *

Marinette nervously chewed on her bottom lip, staring at the static conversation on her phone’s screen. Maybe she’d gone too far too fast. Maybe he thought she was being too clingy. This was just a casual thing, after all.

_What if I scared him away?_

More than five minutes had passed since he’d said “Lemme check”, but he was still online according to the app.

She briefly considered deleting the app and setting her phone on fire, but luckily, she was halted in her thoughts as a new message popped up on the screen.

**> This enough for u?  <**

In the next second, a series of four pictures popped into existence. She never clicked faster on anything in her life.

The first picture showed a mischievous smirk, broad naked shoulders and a thumbs up. It was cropped above the mouth and just below the collarbones.

In the second picture, a suit jacket had made an appearance, and the (extremely handsome, mind you) guy in the frame held it up next to him, pointing at the jacket’s hook and eye clasps with a cheeky smile.

The third picture was more zoomed in, showing civilian!Chat from the nose and down to his neck, playfully holding one of the clasps of the jacket between his teeth.

The clasp had been opened in the next picture, and the boy’s mouth was frozen in the same cheeky smile as in the second picture, but this time, his lips were parted, and a pink tongue was in the process of running along his top lip.

Marinette’s heart thumped in her chest. She bit down a smile as she typed up a message in response.

**_> I’ll admit, I’m impressed…  <_ **

**_> … but that’s not a bra, is it?  <_ **

**> Use ur imagination, princess ;)  <**

As if she wasn’t already using her imagination to its full extent.

She imagined Adrien kissing his way down from her neck, grabbing hold of her bra strap with his teeth, and pulling it down along her arm; she imagined him reaching up with his hand to pull the bra cup down; she imagined him taking her nipple into his mouth and _sucking_ as his other hand moved down between her legs…

Marinette gasped out loud. Her pulse was thrumming in her ears.

**_> I am…  <_ **

**_> I’m imagining u doing some pretty naughty things  <_ **

**> U know who’s both pretty and naughty?  <**

**> Hint: starts with a “p” and ends with “rincess”  <**

Marinette sighed. She hadn’t meant to get so riled up; she just wanted to tease him a bit. Turns out Chat was pretty good at teasing, himself. _Should have known, what with all those cat puns and the damn leather suit…_

**> So what exactly am I doing in those fantasies of urs?  <**

She groaned; part in frustration, part in pleasure. _God damn this cat._

Pulling up the camera app, she aimed the camera at the approximate place she’d done in the last picture. With two fingers, she slid down the strap of her bra from her shoulder, then moved to tug at the cup just slightly. Lastly, she parted her lips in a silent moan and leaned her head back in pleasure. _This’ll get him for sure._

**_> [IMG]  <_ **

**_> Let’s pretend that my fingers are ur teeth…  <_ **

She waited with a smug smile on her lips as she saw him type, then stop, then type again.

**> [IMG]  <**

The picture was simplistic; it portrayed civilian!Chat biting down on the knuckle of his index finger, showing a row of perfect white teeth behind just as perfect lips.

**> Make that my teeth tugging ur bra down, and my hand covering ur mouth to stop u from waking up ur parents, and ur getting warmer…  <**

**_I_** _f you only knew._ If she got any hotter, she was sure she’d explode.

**> U sure u can’t come?  <**

**_> Oh I’m sure I would if u got ur way with me  <_ **

Marinette rolled her eyes.

**> I meant COME OVER, u perv  <**

**_> Says the girl who jerked a superhero off on her balcony in broad daylight?  <_ **

**_> … I might be able to come over for a little bit  <_ **

Her heart skipped a beat. He was coming over. _I got him to change his mind just by sending him a few nudes._ That was a success in her mind. At least it boosted her self-confidence.

**> So what r u waiting for, chaton?  <**

* * *

‘Hey, Plaaagg~’

‘I said NOPE,’ a muffled voice replied from inside the fridge.

Adrien opened the door and saw Plagg lying in the middle of a half-eaten wheel of camembert, giving him the evil eye.

‘You’ll get more cheese later. And in America, I promise I’ll buy you any damn cheese you so much as glance at.’

‘I don’t need no second-rate cheese,’ Plagg huffed, hugging a piece of camembert close to his chest. ‘All I need is old Bertie here.’

Adrien chose to ignore the nickname and held out his hand, palm up. ‘Come on,’ he pleaded. ‘We’re leaving tomorrow, so this is my last chance to see her. Please?’

Muttering under his breath, the little kwami jumped into Adrien’s palm and let himself be brought out of the fridge.

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘But only because I get to see Tikki.’

‘Tikki? Who or what is that?’

Plagg’s cheeks flushed. ‘Never you mind that.’

Adrien decided not to push him farther than necessary. If “Tikki” made it possible for Adrien to see Marinette, then he was endlessly grateful for their—or its—existence.

‘Plagg,’ he said with an eager smile, ‘claws out!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join our cheeky duo next time, when things escalate.


	9. Mask

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ... in which we get more of Adrien's teeth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: *watches Frozer*  
> Me: Wow Adrien is such a beautiful little cinnamon roll  
> Me: *eyes chapter 9 of own fan fic*  
> Me: Uhhhhhhhh... I can explain
> 
> Enjoy ;)

The cool night air was pleasant against Adrien’s heated skin, and the act of getting himself from point A to point B in as short a time as possible effectively removed every last trace of the exhaustion he’d felt earlier. As he ran and jumped and vaulted his way forward, the pictures Marinette had sent him flashed through his mind. He almost lost his balance and fell from the rooftops when the memory of her polka-dotted bra popped up. He gritted his teeth, patting the side pocket of his suit. _I hope she’ll like my surprise, too._ It was a risk, but the gain they could both get from it trumped that danger tenfold.

He landed in a crouch on Marinette’s balcony. The skylight door was open, and a soft, trembling light was welcoming him to come inside. He padded silently over to the door and slipped inside, closing it behind him to shut the cold out—and the sound in.

Marinette had lit candles all over, and in the short moment before his eyes had adjusted to the lighting, something was shoved in front of his face.

‘Open your mouth.’

Confused, he obliged, and in the next moment, something soft and spongey was pushed into his mouth. He started chewing as, finally, Marinette’s face came into focus in front of him. Well, below him; he was standing on her bed, and she was several decimetres shorter than him even when they were standing on even ground.

‘Was that… a blueberry muffin?’ he asked when he’d swallowed it all down.

Marinette grinned. ‘Yep. Baked it myself.’

‘It was amazing,’ he breathed, resisting the impulse to groan in pure satisfaction. Nathalie had brought him food like his father had said that she would, but she’d only brought a bowl of chopped vegetables (which was the diet he usually had to endure right before runway shows and the like), and even though his stomach had been growling, he just hadn’t been in the mood for cold cucumber and tomatoes.

Marinette’s muffins, however… _Mhhhhm._

‘You want another one?’ she asked, already shoving another one into his face. He drew back, unable to stop ogling the delicious pastry.

‘I-I really shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘One is enough.’

She lowered the muffin and gave him a stern look. ‘Have you forgotten rule number four?’

‘I’ve already eaten tonight,’ he lied. As if on cue, his stomach gave a long rumble.

Marinette cocked an eyebrow.

Rolling his eyes, he snagged the muffin from her hand and pushed it into his mouth. She smiled contently as she watched him chew.

 _God damn Marinette and her heavenly freaking pastries._ She was going to be the death of him. Literally.

When he’d swallowed his second muffin, he stepped down beside the bed and leaned closer to Marinette, whose smile disappeared in an instant. He noted with pleasure that her cheeks were already flushed. Bringing his mouth to her ear, he let out a soft exhalation at the same time as his right hand swept around to her back to push her towards him.

‘As much as I love your baking, I didn’t come here for afternoon tea,’ he said in a low purr.

Marinette drew a trembling breath. ‘No? I don’t know why else a superhero like you would stop by the bedroom of a simple baker’s daughter.’

Pulling back slightly, he brought his left index finger and thumb up to her chin to angle her face up towards him. Her eyes widened, as did her pupils. Adrien felt his heart thump in his chest. The way he seemed to affect her… The power was dizzying.

‘Not even if I tell you that said baker’s daughter is incredibly sweet, beautiful and, above all…’ He pushed her even closer, revelling in the softness of her body against him. ‘… ridiculously sexy?’

Marinette gasped softly. Her hands gripped his belt. ‘R-really?’

‘Really,’ he assured her. He drew back, leading Marinette to huff in disappointment, which prompted Adrien to laugh.

‘Hold on,’ he said, unzipping the righthand pocket on his suit. Marinette watched in surprise as he pulled out the black eye mask he’d bought earlier this week, just for these little nightly escapades. He leaned back with a grin, letting the mask dangle from his pinky finger. ‘No more blindfolds for you, m’lady.’

A slow smile coloured Marinette’s lips. ‘Huh.’

Adrien reached up to carefully close her eyes with his fingers. She obeyed, waiting patiently while he de-transformed.

‘Claws in,’ he murmured, albeit nervously, watching Plagg send him an eye roll before zipping away out of sight. Adrien put on the eye mask, ran a hand through his hair to muss it up, then grabbed a careful hold of Marinette’s chin again. ‘You can open your eyes,’ he whispered.

Her eyes fluttered open and immediately began to ravish his body. He swallowed, feeling his heart pound in his chest as she completely _devoured_ him with his eyes. _So this is what it feels like to *really* be looked at,_ he noted, silently thankful for having bought new clothes for the occasion—otherwise, she would probably have recognised him as Adrien, considering how carefully she was studying him now.

_No, “carefully” is definitely not the right word._

She was taking her sweet time ogling him, but he found that he didn’t mind.

‘Like what you see?’ he teased her. She swallowed. _Oh._

‘You… y-you…’

He bit down a smile. ‘Cat got your tongue?’

That snapped her out of it. She scowled. ‘Still Chat under that mask, I hear.’

He broke free from her arms and struck a pose just for her; an almost exact replica of the pose he’d done in the photograph she had of him next to her bed. _Hips forward, shoulders back, hand on waist, cocky smirk._

Marinette _broke._

No, really, she _did_. She flinched and gasped out loud, stumbling back so that she almost fell over the loft’s railing. Adrien reached out to catch her, but she managed to regain her balance on her own. Her senses, however…

‘Oh my _god,_ ’ she breathed, staring at him like she’d never really seen him before. ‘You look—’

‘—like the sexiest, most alluring man you’ve ever seen?’ he teased.

She raised her eyebrows. ‘I was about to say “freakishly much like Adrien on the runway”, but you basically said it all.’

Despite himself, Adrien lost his bearing for a second. _She… she agreed. She actually thinks that…?_

‘Is that really how you feel about Adrien?’ he asked. He couldn’t help it; he needed to know.

Marinette bit down on her bottom lip as she kept ogling him. _Guess I’m going to have to get used to that look on her face…_

‘He’s been my wet dream even since before I knew what that meant,’ she sighed.

Adrien wondered if he looked as chaotic on the outside as he felt on the inside. ‘Oh,’ he choked out.

Marinette seemed to mistake his shock for jealousy, because she hurried to add, ‘That’s why you should take it as a giant compliment when I say that you and Adrien have _a lot_ in common appearance-wise.’

He took a deep breath in an attempt to regain his composure. ‘Y-yeah. Uh… thanks?’

Blushing, Marinette sat down on her bed and stroked a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She’d starting wearing her hair down each time they met; what for, he didn’t know, but he loved it. She looked gorgeous with her hair flowing down over her shoulders.

She started fiddling with the top button on her shirt. ‘You know, I was really impressed with your… um, _credentials._ ’

Just like that, Adrien found himself grinning again. ‘Mm-hm?’

‘But I’m still not completely convinced,’ she continued, spurred on by his reaction. ‘Would you mind giving me a live demonstration?’

Feigning nonchalance, he shrugged casually. ‘I don’t see why not.’ He sauntered over to her by the bed and let himself down on his knees in front of her. Carefully gripping her thighs, he sent her a look that asked, _“This okay?”_ , to which she nodded decisively. Heart thudding, he let his hands slide down to her knees and spread her legs, then moved in between them. Marinette parted her lips; he could hear her breathing getting ragged already.

‘Give me your hands,’ he said in a low voice. She complied, and he took them in his own hands and locked them in place against the bed on either side of her. His gaze met hers. ‘Tell me if you want me to stop.’

She nodded.

Clasping her hands, Adrien leaned forward between her legs and placed a soft kiss against her collarbone. She sighed in pleasure, which spurred him to kiss her again, but this time letting his tongue into the game. Her skin tasted girl and a hint of salt, and when he trailed his kisses downwards, he could feel her heartbeats in his lips. Almost subconsciously, he nibbled at her skin, earning a soft moan from above.

 _Let’s see if I can undress her with just my mouth,_ he silently challenged himself. He’d never done anything like that before, but he felt like if he was going to do it with anyone, it would have to be with Marinette. Never before had a girl been able to make him feel this strongly that he _needed_ her, yet with Marinette, the mere scent of her skin made him almost desperate to undress her and entangle himself with her body.

She moaned again as his lips reached her cleavage. Marinette wasn’t a busty girl, but she wasn’t exactly flat-chested either, and when he dug his face in between her breasts, he realised there was no oxygen to be found there whatsoever. He kissed his way back up again, eventually reaching her top of her left bra cup.

Already breaking his own rules, he let go of her hands for a moment just to reach up and slide the straps of her bra—as well as the shoulders of her shirt—down along her arms. Then he clasped her hands again, intertwining his fingers with hers.

He tried nibbling at the top button of her shirt, and to his relief, he found that it was a snap button. _Thank god,_ he thought as he tugged hard enough with his teeth to release the button. He moved on to the next one, then the one below, and the one after that… until all the buttons were undone, and her polka-dotted bra was out in the open.

Marinette leaned her head back and sighed contently as he returned his mouth to the left cup, closed his teeth around the edge and pulled downward, revealing an already hard nipple. Letting out a soft exhalation in pleasure, he released the bra and kissed his way towards her nipple, taking care to leave a wet trail with his tongue and nibbling at her skin as he went.

His lips reached her nipple and Marinette moaned loudly, prompting him to freeze and remember her parents. Marinette seemed too far gone to think rationally, but someone needed to be the responsible one.

‘Marinette,’ he breathed, ‘you need to be quiet.’

She groaned in reluctance. He smiled against her skin.

‘Yes, you need to, or I can’t go on.’

‘Let go of my hands,’ she said in a breathy voice. He did as she said, whereby she immediately brought them up to cover her own mouth. Adrien chuckled softly.

‘Good.’

He let his tongue swirl around her nipple, revelling in the little muffled sounds she made behind her own hands and the way that she squirmed against his mouth as he kissed and sucked and teased her. Hands down, he’d never been more aroused than he was right then. And while it was fucking _amazing_ to be able to make her feel like this, and to feel her fight to keep still during his ministrations, he was _dying_ to feel more of her; to taste all of her.

Deciding that it was time to remove her bra completely, he briefly considered his options, then realised he’d have to change position if he was to reach the clasp on her back with his teeth. He allowed himself to cheat and reached up to undo it with his hands.

Of course, that was difficult enough as it was.

‘You need help?’ Marinette chuckled, having temporarily removed her hands from her mouth when he’d struggled with the clasp for a longer moment than he would have wished.

‘Nope,’ he replied, and to his relief, he managed to unclasp the bra in the next second. He eagerly pulled the bra downwards and off, then grabbed hold of her shirt to pull it over her head. She helped him without any complaints.

Having freed Marinette’s upper body from its cloth prison, Adrien pushed her down into the bed, half-crawling forward to be able to reach her mouth with his as his forearms supported his weight above her. The first kiss was slow and sloppy, and they were more in sync with each other than they had ever been before, their tongues dancing a secret dance that only they knew and their breaths mingling into one single rhythm.

Eventually, their kiss became more heated, and the pace quickened. Somewhere during it all, Adrien’s shirt disappeared, and so did both of their pants, until they were both wearing only their underpants. Then, Adrien pulled away from Marinette’s mouth and started kissing his way downwards.

‘I love how you taste,’ he murmured against her stomach, feeling her draw for air.

‘B-better than blueberry muffin?’ she breathed. He chuckled.

‘Yeah. _Way_ better.’

He reached the waistband of her panties and gripped it with his teeth, teasingly tugging downward. When his teeth grazed her pelvis, she gasped and dug her fingers into the sheets.

‘Try to be quiet,’ he reminded her.

Then he used his teeth to tug her panties down further, smirking as Marinette lifted her hips to help, until they had reached her thighs, where he switched to using his hands to pull them down the rest of the way, then bent down to kiss his way up along her legs. Marinette was panting.

‘Mhm, Adrien,’ she moaned, and he was so used to hearing her call him by his real name now that he barely even reacted. She was getting loud again, but he couldn’t reach her mouth, and frankly, he was getting to the point of not even caring anymore.

His hot, wet kisses reached the insides of her thighs, and Marinette seemed close to her breaking point. As he planted his next kiss, sucking tenderly at her sensitive skin, she whimpered loudly and bucked up against him.

‘Did you know that you are incredibly fucking hot?’ he asked in a low voice, placing his next kiss even further up.

‘You’re amazing,’ Marinette retorted in a breathless voice.

He nipped the soft skin of her thigh with his teeth. ‘I can’t get enough of you.’

‘Then take me,’ she moaned, lifting her hips again. He responded by pushing her down into the mattress.

‘I will.’

Adrien leaned in closer, so close that his nose grazed her pelvis, and then he exhaled a hot breath against her wetness.

And Marinette… Marinette _came._

Her hips bucked up once again and her thighs started trembling as she gripped the sheet so hard that her knuckles whitened; but what made Adrien widen his eyes was the sound that came out of her mouth. It was half a moan, half a scream, and through it all, she was mumbling something that he couldn’t discern at first, but that eventually took shape into desperate pleadings for him to _take her_ , to _fuck her_ , to _make her his._ Adrien couldn’t take it.

Without really thinking, he pushed her down into the mattress again, then leaned in and kissed her folds before she had even had time to come down from her first high. He sucked, and kissed, and moaned against her, and she kept screaming in pulses of pleasure for several seconds, until eventually the storm calmed down.

‘Adrien,’ she whimpered. He grasped her thighs, feeling his heart rate quicken its pace as she continued to plead and swear and _beg_. ‘Adrien, please—please, I want you, I need you, _please—_ ’

And he thought he understood what she meant, and he wanted it too, he wanted it _so badly._

He pulled away, kissing the inside of her thigh again before lifting his head to look up at her. She had ridden out her orgasm and was now lying completely spent among the sheets, panting.

‘I have condoms,’ he said. She bit down on her bottom lip.

‘Yes,’ she breathed. ‘Yes, get one.’

In a second, he had gotten off the bed and stumbled over to his pants on the floor, digging wildly in the pockets until he found what he was looking for, then returned to Marinette’s panting figure, his head spinning. He kicked his underwear off and planted himself between her legs as he ripped open the packet. Marinette pulled his face down to her and met his lips in a deep, longing kiss, making it just _a little difficult_ to put the condom on, but he eventually managed it, and then he pulled away from the kiss and leaned his forehead against hers, catching her blue, misty gaze with his. _God damn, she’s beautiful like this._

‘Okay?’ he whispered.

She smiled softly. ‘Yeah.’

Slowly, keeping close watch on her face, he pushed into her.

Marinette leaned her head back and whimpered, but when he stopped moving, she breathed, ‘No, don’t stop, it’s amazing…’

He couldn’t agree more. He bit back a moan, closing his eyes hard in an attempt to keep his mind clear.

‘Look at me,’ Marinette whispered. He forced himself to open his eyes, meeting her blue eyes again. He started moving a little faster, in and out, in and out, and watched her press her lips together and _almost_ close her eyes but not quite, and the picture of her pleasure only made it feel even more unbearably amazing to move inside of her.

 _Ladybug,_ he forced himself to think, _it’s Ladybug, I’m sleeping with Ladybug,_ but for some reason, his mind just kept reverting to thinking, _Marinette feels amazing, Marinette is so beautiful, Marinette Marinette Marinette…_

‘You—feel—so— _good_ ,’ he whimpered, ‘I c-can’t—’

‘It’s okay,’ she breathed, half-closed eyes gleaming, ‘don’t worry, it’s okay.’

He gritted his teeth as he felt his orgasm build up inside of him. _Not yet, I don’t want it yet,_ he thought forcefully. _Please, don’t let this end!_

But then Marinette dug her nails into his back, and she moaned loudly, and the mere _sound_ of her pleasure broke all his resolve. He pushed into her erratically, letting out a mixture of a whimper and a moan as the dam burst and he couldn’t stop the orgasm from rippling through his body.

‘Marinette,’ he panted into her neck, ‘you feel so fucking good, oh my god, you’re perfect…’

And she pushed back up against him, leading him to groan in pure unadulterated pleasure as she pushed and pulled back and pushed again against him. _She’s trying to kill me,_ he thought, _and she’s succeeding._

But then the wave died out, and his muscles relaxed, and he only just had enough presence of mind to keep supporting himself on his elbows, or he might have crushed Marinette beneath him.

A slender hand reached up to caress his cheek. He leaned into it, sighing almost ironically at the delicate innocence of the gesture.

‘I liked getting to see you,’ Marinette murmured before letting out a giggle. ‘You were… wow.’

‘Don’t you dare steal my line,’ he said, somehow managing to be playful even though he was about ready to collapse both mentally and physically.

‘Come up with your own.’

He let out a heavy sigh that transformed into a yawn somewhere near the end. ‘Hm… Try again tomorrow.’

‘Tired?’

He yawned again. ‘You have no idea…’

Not wanting to accidentally crush her, he moved to lie down beside her, then, before he forgot, removed the condom and dropped it to the floor. Almost unconsciously, he then pulled Marinette into a spoon, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair.

He wondered what Plagg was doing, and for a moment, he felt a little ashamed that he’d let loose his mischievous kwami in Marinette’s bedroom without her knowledge, but then he remembered what said kwami had told him earlier.

‘Hey, Marinette,’ he mumbled.

‘Mhm?’

‘Do you have a cat?’

‘No… Why do you ask?’

‘Tikki sounds a little like a cat’s name…’

Marinette drew for air, or maybe it was a yawn. Yeah, that made sense… She must be tired, too…

 _So comfy…_ He felt himself almost melt into her, into her bed, into the mattress, and the last thing he wanted to do was to get up, transform and run back home. _Just a little bit… Just a little… while… here…_

* * *

Adrien woke up in confusion an unknown amount of time later and realised 1) that he was still holding Marinette close to his chest, and 2) that they had both forgotten to blow out the candles. He sleepily noted that most of them seemed to have burned out on their own, but some of them were still lit.

_How long have I been sleeping…?_

Marinette was snoring softly. Safely asleep.

What he wanted to do was to stay there, to fall asleep beside her again, to pretend that this was his life and that he had nowhere else to be… But he was supposed to be leaving for America early in the morning, and he couldn’t afford to oversleep or that his father or Nathalie would find him missing.

As carefully as he could—he was just Adrien, after all, not a super cat—he got out of Marinette’s bed and started gathering up his clothes. When he was fully dressed, he blew out the rest of the candles. Plagg appeared by his side with perfect timing, looking almost as sleepy as Adrien did.

‘Don’t ask,’ the kwami muttered. Adrien welcomed him into the inside pocket on his jacket.

Then he turned to look at the creature sleeping in the bed.

Marinette was lying on her side, with her hair fanned out over the pillow and her lips parted. Her body was only half covered by the blanket, so Adrien carefully pulled it up the rest of the way. After watching her for another moment, he placed a soft kiss on her cheek, then climbed up the staircase to the balcony.

* * *

Marinette woke to the sound of the skylight door creaking shut.

‘Chat?’ she murmured sleepily.

There was no response.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll see you all next time, when mistakes are made...


	10. Identity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marinette momentarily forgets who she is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This week's been really hectic, but anyway, here's finally chapter 10. :]

Marinette had expected three things from her summer vacation.

  1. No Adrien. Which was fine, considering that she seemed to be less and less able to talk in his vicinity for every time they saw each other, anyway.
  2. No civilian!Chat. Which was less fine, because she’d grown accustomed to seeing him every other night or so, and knowing that she would have to go three whole months without seeing him was more difficult than she’d imagined it would be.
  3. No Chat Noir. Which was frankly _dangerous_ , because even though her kitty might get himself into trouble more often than out of it, he was still her partner and she was worried how she would fare against Hawkmoth without him.



What she _hadn’t_ expected, however, was for Hawkmoth to completely up and vanish.

The first few weeks, she’d been tense, worrying for the inevitable first fight without her partner. Each time she heard a new sound or a shout, or saw someone get irrationally angry, she jerked, preparing to transform into Ladybug.

But the little black butterfly never came.

What ended up convincing her that Hawkmoth was actually gone for real was when she happened to see Chloé stomping her way through the heart of the city, throwing jeers and taunts at anyone who so much as glanced in her direction. The girl was literally angering _everyone_ in her vicinity—and still no Hawkmoth.

That’s when Marinette started getting worried for real.

 _So Adrien, Chat Noir, *and* Hawkmoth all go away in the same breath?_ Something was up. And she refused to let her guard down.

So every night for the next few months, Marinette went out to train.

She couldn’t afford to lose her agility, and even though her Miraculous gave her inhuman strength and capabilities, she could still top those powers off with her own skills.

Whatever Hawkmoth was up to, he wouldn’t fool her. She refused to believe that he was gone for real; this was just some kind of psychological game he played to upset the balance. He would come back. And when he did, she would be ready.

* * *

**> Never thought Purr-is would feel so empty without mew  <**

**_> U must be rly desperate to make two puns in one sentence…  <_ **

**_> … I miss u too  <_ **

Adrien locked the screen on his phone and let it down to rest against his thigh, leaning back in his heavenly chair with a sigh. Between the hectic schedule and the constant pressure to model—even off the runway and behind the cameras—a comfortable chair was like a glittering oasis in a searing hot desert, and Adrien had learned to make the most out of every little bright spot this summer.

He glanced in the direction of his father, who was standing next to the runway, talking to a group of wardrobe assistants and stylists. Their next show was in five hours, and Gabriel had told his son that after he’d finished here, there’d be time for some well-deserved rest, and that after the fashion show, they’d go out for dinner together. He’d even booked reservations at a fancy place with three Michelin stars.

Today would mark the halfway point of their time in America, and it actually hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought it would. He’d had plenty of time to rest, and even though his diet was still (necessarily) strict, he was never denied food, meaning that he never had to break rule 4.

The phone buzzed against his thigh.

**> So what r u up to today?  <**

**_> Dinner with the whole family at this new place I haven’t tried before. I predict food coma  <_ **

It’s not like he was lying; he _was_ going out with his entire family. Marinette didn’t have to know that his whole family consisted of only one person. _Though if she knew I was Adrien…_

**_> What about u?  <_ **

**> Was thinking of getting a bath and then going to bed  <**

Adrien glanced at his father. Still busy talking.

**_> Bath sounds nice  <_ **

**> I thought cats hated water?  <**

**_> #notallcats  <_ **

**> Dork  <**

He smiled to himself as he typed up his reply.

**_> U know what cats like more than water?  <_ **

**> Puns?  <**

**_> … mm, that, but also…  <_ **

**_> Pretty girls in bathtubs  <_ **

She didn’t respond immediately, so Adrien locked his phone and sank down further in the chair—until he realised that a girl was watching him from the back of the runway. She had her head cocked to the side as if she was in deep thought, but there was no doubt that she was staring at him. Clearing his throat, Adrien sat up straight again, glancing at the girl just to see if she was still watching. She was, but when their gazes met, she smiled shyly and looked away. Adrien frowned. With her petit figure and the graceful way she walked off the runway, she was almost certainly a model, but so far, no other models in America had seemed to recognise him. Did she?

He’d enjoyed being unknown during the summer, because he was so used to being recognised anywhere in Paris. For once, he could walk the streets in peace, just like anyone. But maybe that was changing.

His phone buzzed in his hand. He unlocked it.

**> [IMG]  <**

Adrien raised his eyebrows as a slow smile warmed his lips. Marinette had sent him a picture taken in the bathtub, alright—but she was fully clothed, winking cheekily at the camera.

**_> U know, this isn’t exactly what I meant, but damn, ur cute…  <_ **

**> ;*  <**

**> [IMG]  <**

Adrien froze in his chair. The second picture was also of Marinette, also taken in the bathtub, but this time, there was actually water in the tub, and two naked legs were framed perfectly among the bubbles, crossed and resting on the tub’s edge. His heart jumped at the same time as blood rushed to his private parts.

**_> … ok maybe cute’s not the right word for u  <_ **

**> So what am I?  <**

**_> Beautiful, sexy, and damn cheeky  <_ **

He grinned like a fool as he watched the three little dots appear. _Maybe this isn’t the best time for this, but…_

**> U know what would be sexy?  <**

**> If I had a picture of Paris’ famous superhero to join me in the bath  <**

Adrien’s heart fluttered. He glanced at his father and saw that he was standing alone now, browsing through a clipboard and mumbling to himself.

**_> Hang on, let me just check through the library of Ladybug pics on my phone  <_ **

**> Who’s the cheeky one of us again?  <**

**_> Still u, princess…  <_ **

He kept grinning at the screen while waiting for her reply—until suddenly, his phone started buzzing wildly in his hand.

A call.

From Marinette.

His eyes widened. _Oh shit oh shit oh shit she’s calling me—_

Before he knew what he was doing, he’d accepted the call and was holding the phone up to his ear.

‘H-hello?’

For a few seconds, all he heard was slow breathing, and then what sounded like an amused exhalation.

‘Hi, Chat.’

Adrien almost groaned out loud. She sounded so… so… _aroused._

‘Hi, princess,’ he replied in a low voice, carefully getting up from his chair. ‘Give me a sec, okay?’

‘Okay.’

He muted his microphone and started towards the door, but on the way, his father caught sight of him.

‘Adrien,’ he called out, ‘where are you going? I’ll be done here in a short moment.’

‘I-I’m just, um, going to change clothes. I’ll be right back.’

Gabriel raised an inquisitive eyebrow, but didn’t say anything else, so Adrien slipped away. He left the room and hurried for the dressing room. But when he opened the door, he saw that it was already occupied by some other models. Closing the door again, he scanned his vicinity with the alert eyes of a teenage boy who was about to talk to a pretty girl currently naked and waiting for him in a bathtub on the other side of the globe.

There was a corner with bathroom doors further away, and he half-ran over to them with his heart galloping in his chest. As soon as he’d locked himself into one of the bathrooms, he unmuted his mic again.

‘There,’ he murmured.

‘Not a great time?’ she asked, and this time, her voice was hesitant.

‘No, I mean, _yes_ , I just had to find a secluded space.’ He took a deep breath, placing his free palm against the cool wall in an attempt to calm himself. ‘You having a nice bath?’

There was a soft splashing sound as Marinette moved in the bathtub. ‘Mm-hm,’ she said. ‘Though it’d be way nicer if you were here with me.’

He groaned quietly. ‘Trust me, I’d want nothing more than that right now…’

‘Hm…’ Another splash. ‘What would you do if you were here with me?’

Too heady to remember that public bathrooms were gross, Adrien closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the wall above his hand. ‘I’d do anything you wanted me to,’ he murmured.

‘Would you… kiss my neck?’

‘Definitely,’ he breathed.

‘Would you touch me?’

‘Oh, Marinette… I wouldn’t be able not to.’

She drew for air. ‘Where would you touch me?’ she whispered.

Adrien’s nails scraped against the wall as his hand slid downwards. ‘I’d start by holding you in my arms, letting my hands explore your back, then move around your side… upwards, to massage your breasts…’

‘Mm…’

‘And from there, I’d go lower and lower… across your stomach, past your hips… and down to your knees. And then…’ He sighed. ‘I’d part your legs, and move back upwards.’

Marinette panted softly. ‘Tell me what you’d do next?’

Adrien’s hand was trembling, trying to stay away from the zipper of his pants. He shouldn’t… He really shouldn’t… Not here, where anyone could hear him. Where his _father_ could hear him. But she sounded _so damn sexy,_ with her little breaths and pleadings for him to tell her what he’d do with her, and he was already about to rip at the seams.

‘You’re so naughty, princess,’ he said, and it came out in a half-whimper.

She exhaled another soft breath, and water splashed in the background. ‘I’ll tell you what I want you to do next,’ she said.

Adrien groaned silently. ‘Please do.’

Anyone who would walk past in the following minutes might be able to hear faint mumbling and soft panting, eventually followed by longing moans that rose in volume for a short moment before being swallowed by silence again.

But no one walked past, and no one paused outside to listen.

And that was lucky for Adrien, because when he left the bathroom a short while later, his cheeks were red like tomatoes and his pants just a little too tight.

* * *

With one week of summer left, Hawkmoth still hadn’t created any new Akumas. Had he retired for good, or just taken vacation like Ladybug and Chat Noir?

 _This would be the perfect time to strike,_ Marinette had thought more than once in the three months that passed without incident. _We’re divided, unprepared. He would only have to fight one of us instead of two. So why won’t he?_

Eventually, her resolve to train died down. Maybe Hawkmoth really was gone for good? Then again, wasn’t that strangely anti-climactic?

‘What do you think, Tikki?’ Marinette asked her red goddess friend one evening during the last week before school would start again. ‘Is he really gone?’

‘No way,’ Tikki said, shaking her head. ‘If it was over, we would have heard from Nooroo by now.’

‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Marinette sighed, chewing on her pink pencil as she spun around on her desk chair. ‘So what do you think happened?’

The kwami looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘Hawkmoth’s still just a human, even if he had bad intentions. Maybe his life came in the way?’

Marinette smiled ironically. ‘Yeah, maybe he has kids, and he’s gone on vacation.’

‘Maybe,’ Tikki agreed.

_Could Hawkmoth really have taken a break just because it’s summer vacation?_

‘He didn’t stop last summer,’ Marinette pointed out.

‘Maybe he stayed home in the past years?’

Marinette opened her mouth to answer that it seemed unlikely that he’d decide to be gone for the entire summer just this year, but paused when her phone buzzed on the desk. She stopped spinning and leaned forward to peer at the notification on the screen.

  * **Twitter 7:28 PM**
  * @akumawatch:
  * #Akuma at Eiffel Tower, no LB or CN yet



She turned to stare at Tikki.

‘He’s back,’ she whispered.

* * *

‘Adrien! Hey! Adrien!

Adrien groaned, swathing at the annoying voice next to his ear. ‘Shut up Plagg, I’m trying to sleep.’

‘Don’t you tell me to shut up!’

‘Maybe kwamis don’t get jetlagged, but humans do,’ Adrien mumbled, covering his ear with a pillow.

‘You idiot, there’s an AKUMA!’ Plagg’s muffled voice half-screamed beside him.

Adrien sat up straight in bed, suddenly fully awake. ‘Akuma?’

He might be tired as hell, but in no way would he leave Ladybug to fight a single more Akuma alone after leaving her to her fate the entire summer.

‘Where? When?’

‘The Eiffel Tower,’ Plagg huffed, hands on his… hips? ‘Ten minutes ago, apparently.’

‘Ladybug’s been fighting alone for _ten whole minutes_?’

‘Don’t you dare give me that look! I _tried_ to wake you up, but you just kept snoring away.’

Adrien ran a hand through his hair, slapped his cheeks a few times to get going, and got out of bed. ‘Well, you know the drill,’ he said, clenching his ringed hand into a fist. ‘Claws out!’

* * *

Marinette’s yo-yo wrapped itself around the beam just in time for her to launch herself off the side of the Eiffel Tower as the giant wrecking ball slammed into the side of the construction. The entire tower wobbled, but Marinette stayed on course, landing a few beams below. She withdrew the yo-yo and looked up at the Akuma.

‘Give me your Miraculous, or I will wreck this stupid thing!’ the girl above her shouted, eyes blazing beneath her yellow helmet. She pulled back the chain with the wrecking ball, then launched it again.

Marinette jumped to the side just before it hit, landing on the same wobbling beam again and almost losing her balance. _Get a grip, Ladybug_ , she thought in frustration. She hadn’t been training for several weeks, and it showed—she was out of sync, out of tune with the battle.

‘I thought you were an architectural student!’ she shouted up to the Akuma. ‘Why would you want to destroy Paris’ most famous landmark?’

She dodged the wrecking ball again, using her yo-yo as a safety line.

‘That’s none of your business!’

Panting, Marinette launched herself off the tower again as the wrecking ball closed in on her. ‘Aren’t you inspired by this amazing construction?’

‘For your information, I used to be!’ the Akuma growled. She clenched her gloved fists harder around the chain. ‘Then _Maria_ came along and ruined everything! She just… she just _had_ to bring him here… Here, to my absolute favourite place in the world! And then she had the _nerve_ to kiss him! Right _there!_ ’

Ladybug launched the yo-yo again, letting it wrap around the beam just above her, but as she swung off into the air, she realised that she had miscalculated the movement of the wrecking ball. _She_ got away safely, but just as she had thrown herself off the edge, the ball slammed into the beam above—and snapped the string of her yo-yo.

Her eyes widening in panic, she tried to grab hold of something to pull herself back in, but she was too far out, and the Akuma was already yanking the chain back and launching it in her direction—

‘Cataclysm!’

She’d closed her eyes as the ball closed in on her, but at the sound of the familiar phrase, she flung them open again just in time to see Chat Noir flying towards her with his hand raised.

‘ _NO!_ ’ Marinette yelled. _He’s going to take the hit for me—_

Chat’s right hand met with the wrecking ball as his other arm looped around Marinette’s waist, forcing the air out of her lungs in the sudden acceleration. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the ball shatter into millions of pieces, releasing a black butterfly right before she and Chat reached the platform in the middle of the tower, coming to a stop only thanks to Chat’s staff, the end of which he stabbed into the metal to sharply brake their movement. His hand clasped her side hard to keep her from flying off.

When they’d finally stopped moving, Ladybug blinked at him in confusion.

‘Y-you—’

‘The Akuma,’ he reminded her in a breathy voice. Her gaze snapped to the butterfly currently flapping its wings by the edge of the platform. The girl in the helmet had bounced back from losing her wrecking ball and was now reaching for the butterfly. Marinette panicked for a second— _the string of my yo-yo snapped—_ but then she saw the little polka-dotted device with its half string lying on the platform almost all the way over by the butterfly.

Marinette _threw_ herself at it, her fingers wrapping around the string just as the girl reached the butterfly, and in blind desperation, she launched the yo-yo towards the figure, staring as it moved almost in slow motion towards its goal.

The yo-yo slapped away the girl’s hand in the same movement as it caught the butterfly. Marinette let out a relieved breath as it came flying back to her.

‘Miraculous Ladybug!’ she shouted victoriously, starting the process of purifying the Akuma while Chat caught hold of the Akumatised girl and brought her down to the ground to keep her from falling to her death when the transformation broke.

When the butterfly had left the yo-yo and fluttered away in all white, and Chat had returned to the platform, Marinette allowed herself a moment to breathe. She closed her eyes as she inhaled, then exhaled and relaxed her shoulders.

Then she opened her eyes again and saw that Chat was watching her with his head cocked to the side and the beginning of a smile on his lips.

‘You came,’ she noted. _And you risked your life for me, like you always do._

‘Of course, m’lady,’ he smirked. ‘I returned to Paris earlier today, and you know I wouldn’t leave you hangi _mmmpfff_ —’

Her mouth was on his before she’d even realised that she’d stepped closer to him. All her longing, all her worry, and all her _pining_ was poured into one single kiss; a fumbling, clumsy kiss that, had she been fully aware of herself, might have embarrassed her. But she had missed him enough and been too worried for his safety to care.

Chat, on the other hand, had frozen completely.

That’s when Marinette realised something was wrong.

She opened her eyes and saw Chat’s green irises staring back at her in shock. And it hit her.

_I’m not Marinette right now._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops...
> 
> Come back next time for a healthy dose of A N G S T.


	11. Cataclysm, pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marinette faces her worst fear.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you guys liked the cliffhanger? >:]

Marinette stared into the utterly confused green irises of Chat Noir. His lips were hot but frozen against hers, a shocked breath of air leaving his mouth and fanning out against her lips as he seemed to catch up to what was going on. Meanwhile, the girl with the dark pigtails saw her life shatter to pieces in her mind’s eye.

_I’m not Marinette right now._

_I’M LADYBUG._

Faster than a black cat in battle, Marinette jerked back from Chat. As soon as they lost contact, he fell to his knees—without losing his wide-eyed stare. He looked at her as if she was a real, actual, true-to-form goddess of fortune that had just told him that she could grant him one wish, a wish for anything, and like he was seeing the very real possibility that he could finally have _the one thing_ he’d always wanted in life. He was looking at her like she was a miracle, _his_ miracle, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have almost thought she could see him tell a prayer under his breath.

 _Quick,_ she urged herself in panic, _think of something to say to save this!_

Mustering all her self-control and confidence, she struck a nonchalant pose and gave him a smile and a playful wink.

‘Just a little ”welcome home” gift,’ she said.

_No hang on wHAT THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY??? AND DID I JUST **WINK**???_

Chat’s chin just about dropped to the floor, and he looked as forlorn as an abandoned kitty, but no, she couldn’t adopt this little kittycat, she needed to ESCAPE. _NOW._

‘A-anyway it was nice seeing you again okay see you bye!!!’

And she used her yo-yo to launch herself as far away as she could in the first direction she turned to, leaving behind an utterly shocked little black cat.

* * *

By sheer willpower alone, Plagg managed to hold the transformation until Adrien got home, but as soon as the boy dropped down through one of his bedroom windows, the cat suit vanished and Plagg appeared in the air beside his chosen.

Said chosen was still in shock.

‘Ladybug kissed me,’ he murmured, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.

Plagg hesitated. _Should I tell him?_ He didn’t like seeing him like this, but even a god of destruction had his limits, and meddling with a romantic squabble between two humans was one of them. They had to solve this on their own. _Tikki would agree with me._

‘So why all the fuss? Shouldn’t you be happy?’ he asked instead.

After closing the window, Adrien leaned back against the pane and stared into the empty air in front of him.

‘It’s more complicated than that…’ He sighed and slid down into a crouch, running a hand through his hair. ‘You know, I’d… I’d basically given up on Ladybug, but…’

Plagg rolled his eyes. _Oh here we go._

‘… but maybe she actually feels something for me?’

_Well, duh._

‘And if she does…’ Adrien sighed again. ‘I mean…’ He let out a bitter laugh. ‘Here I was worrying that I might have broken rule number two, but when Ladybug kissed me…’

_God damn humans and their indecisiveness._

‘Oh, god,’ Adrien mumbled suddenly, hiding his face in his hands. ‘I’m so fucked. Marinette is… but Ladybug… Fuck.’

_LADYBUG AND MARINETTE ARE THE SAME PERSON, YOU IDIOT!!!_

Adrien looked up at him with a wide-eyed stare. Plagg froze.

_Wait… did I say that out loud?_

‘I can’t keep seeing Marinette, can I? Not anymore. Not now.’

The kwami relaxed again.

‘Not when Ladybug is in love with me.’

‘Oh PLEASE, it was just a KISS for camembert’s sake.’

Adrien frowned. ‘She _flirted_ with me, Plagg.’

Plagg let out a theatrically loud groan and left the boy to his angst by the window. _Stupid human._

* * *

‘Oh my god, Tikki, I fucked up _so bad!_ ’

The spotted kwami gave her chosen a look full of sympathy. ‘I’m sure it will be fine, Marinette.’

Marinette spun around with wide eyes, tearing at her hair. ‘Fine? _FINE?_ How could it ever be _fine_ again after what just happened?!’

‘Ladybug has kissed Chat Noir before,’ Tikki reminded her.

‘Yeah,’ Marinette agreed, ‘when she needed to snap him out of a spell! That’s different!’

The kwami sighed deeply. ‘What does it matter? You and Chat Noir are in a relationship. Does it matter whether you’re with him as Marinette or as Ladybug?’

‘Yes! It matters!’

‘Why?’

‘Because a) he’s in love with Ladybug, b) Ladybug doesn’t love him back, and c) I’m in love with Adrien!’ Marinette sighed deeply, closing her eyes and rubbing her temples with her index and middle fingers. ‘I need to get that damn cat out of my head,’ she muttered. _But how?_

‘Really, Marinette,’ Tikki tried patiently, ‘don’t you think you’re looking at this the wrong way?’

_School starts next week, and then I’ll see Adrien again._

‘You’ve been flirting with Chat Noir all summer,’ Tikki continued. ‘And before that, too!’

_I have to replace Chat with Adrien. I need to do something about my damn crush. I can’t let it go on like this._

‘Maybe you should stop to consider the fact that you might have feelings for—’

‘It’s decided!’ Marinette exclaimed, feeling reinvigorated by her determination. ‘Operation _Get Adrien_ starts now!’

Tikki let out a tired sigh as Marinette spun a lap of victory in her desk chair. ‘Fine. I’ll support you.’

* * *

It turned out that “Operation Get Adrien” was not as simple in reality as it had seemed in theory, because the moment that Marinette saw Adrien Agreste slam the car door closed on the first school day of the semester, her heart started boxing into her lungs, and she had to grab hold of Alya for support.

‘Jeez,’ her friend said, giving Marinette an amused glance. ‘Already?’

‘Dude!’

Marinette watched as Nino raced down the stairs and threw himself at the blond boy currently standing on the sidewalk. Adrien widened his eyes in surprise at first, but then he started laughing and clapping Nino on the back.

‘Hey, Nino,’ he said, coughing a little when the other boy released him. ‘You been working out?’

Nino let one arm casually wrap around Adrien’s shoulders and pulled him with him up the stairs. ‘Sorry I squeezed you so hard. It’s just, I’ve missed you, y’know.’

‘I missed you too.’

Marinette nearly swooned at the sight of the sincere smile Adrien gave his friend. That innocent, just purely happy smile that only Adrien Agreste could pull off. _I love it._

‘Yo, lover boy!’

Just like that, the smile turned to Alya. ‘Hi, Alya,’ it said, and then Marinette felt the beam of light move to her own face. She felt like she was about to melt into a puddle and evaporate.

‘Marinette,’ Adrien said, and damn it if his voice didn’t soften together with his eyes. ‘You two look good.’

Marinette’s heart stopped for a second before she realised that he’d said “you two”, not “you” as in “Marinette, the love of my life”.

‘You don’t look so bad yourself, Agreste,’ Alya said with a wink— _how does she do that?_ —and he really didn’t. He was tall and handsome like she remembered him, well, okay, as she saw every morning on the posters on her bedroom walls, but he was a little more tan and it seemed like he’d put on a little weight, which she didn’t mind at all. He always used to eat way too little and used to be way too thin, so if that had changed during the summer, she couldn’t be more happy.

‘I’m just glad to be back in France,’ he sighed.

‘Agreste Fashion blew up in the States, huh?’ Alya asked. ‘Lots of new stalkers online?’

‘Let’s not talk about that,’ Adrien said before returning his attention back to Marinette, who had stood wide-eyed and silent during the whole exchange. ‘How are you, Mari?’

Her eyes widened, if possible, even further. ‘I-I-I um yes I’m-m fi-ine?’

Adrien grinned. ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

Then Nino said something and they all laughed, except for Marinette, who was frozen and unable to hear a single thing, her brain filled to the brim with the picture of Adrien’s grin and the way that he’d said “Mari”.

And as the four friends went inside so as not to be late for the first class, Marinette mentally cursed herself for being so weak.

 _I’m supposed to be suave,_ she admonished herself. _Adrien is supposed to fall flat because of how swoonworthy I am. I’m supposed to be killing it, but instead I’m here failing it._

The entire first week continued in the same manner: Adrien being amazingly kind and handsome, and Marinette being weak and pathetic. When the weekend arrived, she felt more hopeless than she’d done in a long time. _I can’t do it. I still can’t do it._ She needed some kind of external motivator; something that would force her to confront her fears, that she couldn’t stop once she’d gotten it going.

And though it scared the hell out of her, she was pretty sure she knew what she had to do.

* * *

**> Hey :) u doing anything this afternoon?  <**

Adrien blinked again, as if the text message on his phone’s screen would be any less confusing when he looked at it a second, or third, or even fourth time. _Did she send it accidentally? Did she mean to send it to the other number?_

Needless to say, he was pretty used to getting texts from Marinette by now.

What he wasn’t used to was getting them sent to his _private_ number, i.e., to _Adrien_ instead of Chat Noir.

It wasn’t like she’d never texted Adrien before; they _were_ friends after all. But their messages were usually short and to the point, and often concerned where to meet up for whatever group thing all four of them were doing together. So to get a message like this from Marinette… It rang all sorts of warning bells.

Then again, he couldn’t just _assume_ that she’d texted the wrong person/number. And he couldn’t ignore her message. So he decided that the best course of action definitely must be to pretend like chatting with Marinette was a completely normal thing (which it usually was; however, under _very_ different circumstances).

**_> Nothing much. You?  <_ **

When he’d sent the message, Adrien was already exhausted. The truth was that his Saturday afternoon was shock full of photo shoots and runway practice and other drab appointments, but he was too curious to say no to seeing Marinette, if that’s what she was planning. He could face the consequences later.

**> Same. Wanna hang out? Maybe go to a café?  <**

**> There’s something I want to talk to you about.  <**

Adrien frowned at the second message. Something she wanted to talk to him about…?

He widened his eyes. _Does she know who I am? Has she figured out that I’m Chat Noir?_

No, that couldn’t be, right? Right? They hadn’t even seen each other since he returned to Paris—strange that she hadn’t asked to meet yet, but relieving, since it meant he didn’t have to turn her down—but what if the reason she’d been so quiet had been because she’d found something out, and now she was ready to confront him?

He needed to find out what she knew.

What Adrien wanted to ask was, _“How did you find out?”_ , but what he finally decided on replying was,

**_> I’d love to. :)  <_ **

* * *

Marinette read the received message for the umpteenth time, her heart stuck in her throat. _He’d love to. He’d love to. He’d love to._

He’d love to see her. He’d love to hang out with her.

‘Eeek,’ she heard herself squeak, prompting Tikki to appear from her place on a soft pillow next to Marinette’s bed.

‘Is everything all right?’ the little red goddess asked, her face scrunched up in worry.

‘Yes!’ Marinette exclaimed. ‘He wants to see me, Tikki!’

‘Aren’t you friends?’ Tikki asked in confusion. ‘You see each other every day, in school.’

‘But this is different! This! Is! On! The! Weekend!’

She hurried to type in a reply.

**_> Great! 2 at Café de rivière?  <_ **

Marinette got off her bed and ran over to her wardrobe, digging through it for something to wear. ‘I need to look good,’ she breathed. She held up a strapless summer dress in pink that would end on the middle of her thighs. ‘Perfect!’

She was on her way to the bathroom when her phone buzzed in her hand.

**> Sure. C u there :)  <**

Marinette’s heart jumped. ‘Okay, I have exactly one hour and thirty-six minutes to shower, put on make-up and prepare myself to face the worst fears of my life.’ She took a deep breath. ‘No problem.’

* * *

Adrien chose a table by the window so that he would be able to see Marinette arrive. He sat down and absent-mindedly stirred his cup of coffee, chin resting in his free hand while he gazed out at the street. On his way to the café, he’d been too stressed to think about what would happen when he met with Marinette, but now, the worst-case scenario popped up in his mind.

 _If she knows that I am Chat Noir… she’ll probably be furious. She’ll feel betrayed, and rightly so._ He had no idea what he would say to her if that was the case. He had no excuse for what he’d done; nothing he could say would make things right. He’d used her.

And what did it matter that he’d already promised himself not to do it again? He hadn’t broken it off with Marinette yet. Sure, she hadn’t texted him since he’d come home, but he hadn’t told her that he was done. She had no reason to believe him if he told her that was the case.

 _I should have listened to myself,_ he thought regretfully. _I should have stayed away from Marinette._

But she had reminded him so much of Ladybug… She’d reminded him so much of someone he was absolutely certain he could never have. And now? Now that he might actually have a chance with Ladybug, he wanted out? _I’m such a jerk. Marinette would be right to be furious._

But the dark-haired girl that entered the café a short moment after him looked the opposite of furious.

Her cheeks were the same colour as her pink summer dress—a dress which was strapless, he noted with slight horror—and when she caught sight of him, her lips pulled into a nervous smile. He waved at her in confusion; she didn’t look at all like someone who had just figured out that one of her best friends had tricked and used her for his own gains for the past months. She looked… cute.

He watched her wave back before turning to order something by the register. She wore her hair down, just like she used to whenever Chat came for a visit. Was it a conscious choice? Should he take it as a hint?

‘Hey,’ he said with a smile when she arrived by his table.

‘Hello.’ She gave him a shy glance and sat down across from him, carefully placing her cup of hot chocolate on the table between them. Adrien watched her wrap her hands around it.

‘Are you cold?’ he asked.

Marinette looked up at him, her cheeks growing even more pink. ‘Um-yeah, I uh, my hands are always cold. I think I’m, uh, cold-blooded.’ She smiled nervously.

‘I seriously doubt that,’ he replied, cursing inwardly when a memory of a half-naked and steaming hot Marinette pinned beneath him in bed invaded his brain. He cleared his throat. ‘Anyway, I’m really glad you asked if we could meet up.’

She stared at him. ‘You are?’

He gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Of course. I mean, I love it when you, me, Nino and Alya hang out, but I feel like you and I never really get the chance to talk.’

She nodded slowly, stroking a loose strand of hair behind her ear and casting down her eyes. ‘I like talking to you. I just… t-tend to get a little f-flustered.’

Adrien let out a small sigh. _Don’t I know it._

At least, now he knew why that was. He’d worried for so long that she didn’t feel comfortable around him, when in reality it was just that she had a crush on him.

‘There’s no reason to be nervous around me,’ he assured her. ‘I’m just a giant dork.’

Marinette giggled. ‘A giant dork who happens to be a national _and_ international superstar. Yeah, I don’t see why I’d be nervous.’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘That’s why? Mari, you know me. You know I’m just a regular guy.’ _Nothing to idolise._

She nodded, but somehow he didn’t trust that she was telling the truth. He watched her take a sip from her hot chocolate.

‘Before I met you, I kinda saw you as a… a superhero,’ she confessed, making Adrien cringe inwardly at her choice of words. ‘But it turned out you’re not just an amazing model, you’re also an amazing friend.’

He paused, looking up from his coffee to study her face. She was smiling. Had she… stopped stuttering?

In the next second, she looked away again, nervously fiddling with one of her black ear studs. ‘About why I asked you to meet me today…’

 _Here it comes._ Adrien swallowed as he waited for her to continue.

Marinette seemed to take a deep breath, then looked up at him with her clear blue eyes. ‘I—’ She hesitated.

Adrien nervously moistened his lips. ‘You…?’

She closed her eyes hard and wrinkled her nose in a pained grimace. ‘I—I—I really like you, Adrien!’

He froze. _Oh. Oh no. Did I…_

‘And I d-don’t mean, just _like_ you, I m-mean I-I have a—a crush on you!’

_… Did I completely misjudge the situation?_

‘Actually it’s m-more than that,’ she continued, now opening her eyes and drawing for air at the same time, ‘it’s much more th-than that.’

_Oh s h i t, I did, didn’t I? Fuck—_

Marinette’s hands were clasping the cup so hard that her knuckles were white. ‘Adrien, I—I think I l-love—’

‘Just a friend!’ he blurted out, drowning out the rest of her sentence. ‘W-we’re just friends!’

Marinette stared at him, her lips quivering. _Oh shit oh shit oh shit I need to save this—_

‘I mean, I really appreciate you, and you telling me this is… It’s amazingly brave, Marinette, wow, but I just… I… I don’t feel the same way.’

 _Marinette’s teeth biting into her bottom lip, Marinette moaning my name as she arches her back, Marinette trembling as I grip her thighs—_ No, not now, _god_ , why would he think of that _now?!_

‘You’re my friend,’ he said, clasping the edges of the table to keep himself steady. ‘One of my best friends. I don’t see you as anything more than that.’ _I absolutely, definitely, totally am not imagining you coming into my mouth right now, one-hundred percent—_

A rumble shook the café, and out of the corner of his eye, Adrien saw a shadow moving on the street outside. He turned to the window at the same time as Marinette did.

A trail had been raised up in the middle of the cobblestone street, as if something had passed by quickly right beneath the surface. People were pointing and shouting; some brought out their phones to record what was happening.

‘Akuma,’ Adrien and Marinette said in unison. They turned to look at each other, all awkwardness momentarily forgotten.

‘It could be dangerous to stay here,’ Marinette said, already getting up from her seat.

‘Definitely,’ Adrien agreed, silently thankful that Marinette seemed to live by rule number 3. He followed her out of the building, but came to a halt right outside. ‘I—I left my phone inside,’ he lied when she turned to see what was wrong. ‘Go ahead, find a safe place. I promise I’ll be right behind you.’

She hesitated. ‘Maybe you could get it later? I mean—’

‘I’ll be fine,’ he assured her, casting a nervous glance in the direction the rumble had gone. _I can’t waste a second longer; Ladybug might be all alone out there._

‘Adrien—’

‘Marinette,’ he said, giving her a sharp look. ‘ _Go._ ’

She pressed her lips together in displeasure. Then, finally, she ran. Adrien ducked inside the café again, even as the rest of the guests rushed outside.

‘Meowch,’ Plagg said the minute it was safe for him to come out. ‘That was harsh.’

‘I needed her to get to safety,’ Adrien murmured.

‘Yeah? There wasn’t even a tiny bit of frustration there over the whole “I’m in love with you” thing?’

Adrien shook his head. ‘We don’t have time for this.’ He clenched his hand into a fist. ‘Claws out!’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did I say that chapter 11 would be full of angst? Boi, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.


	12. Cataclysm, pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things get worse before they get better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m really proud of how this chapter turned out. Not to overhype, but… it’s probably the best written chapter of this fic so far, rivalled only by chapter 9.

Something was off with Ladybug.

Adrien had seen it the moment she showed up to the battle; the confident smile that was so characteristic for her was nowhere to be found, and when he tried to ease her up with a joke, she gave him a gaze full of needles before darting off to try to defeat the Akuma all on her own.

Her anger—or whatever it was—made her reckless, and when the battle was finally over and she’d purified Paris once again, the only thing left in pieces was her.

Adrien stared at her where she stood panting on the rooftop, holding the arm that she’d hurt in her recklessness. Her ear studs and his ring beeped in unison, but he couldn’t care less.

‘What the hell was that?’ he asked her, expecting her to turn around to look at him, but she just kept gazing out at the horizon. ‘Are you trying to get yourself killed?’

‘Leave me alone,’ she said softly.

‘Leave you alone? Something’s obviously wrong, and I’m not going to leave you like this.’

‘I’m telling you I want to be alone.’

Two beeps.

Adrien took a few tentative steps towards her. ‘Ladybug… Please. You can talk to me.’

She didn’t answer, so he walked the last couple of steps until he reached her, and he grabbed a careful hold of her shoulder. ‘LB, what’s wrong? You’re not acting like yourself—’

In a swift move, she swatted his hand off and spun around to face him. Adrien flinched. Her eyes were cold; colder than he’d ever seen them.

‘It’s none of your business,’ she said sharply.

He swallowed. ‘Ladybug—’

‘What is it that you don’t get? We’re not friends, Chat,’ she sputtered, eyes glowing fiercely. ‘You don’t know me. You don’t know anything about me. So don’t try to pretend that you know what this is about.’

Adrien paused. _We’re… not friends?_ He studied her face, wanting—nay, _needing_ —to find a sign there that she was lying to herself, but all he could see was anger. _Maybe she’s right. Maybe I don’t know anything about her._

‘I _don’t_ know what it’s about,’ he agreed. ‘But to say that we’re not friends?’ He opened up his arms in a dejected gesture. ‘I just don’t believe that that’s how you really feel.’

Three beeps.

Ladybug closed her eyes and pinched her nose. ‘Don’t.’

He scowled. ‘Don’t what? Don’t point out that you’re acting freaking strange? Seriously, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you’d been Akumatised.’

She shook her head. ‘Just stop.’

‘No,’ he said, clenching his fists by his sides. ‘Because I _do_ consider us as friends, and friends help each other when they’re not feeling like themselves. I’m not leaving until you give me an explanation for why you risked your life today.’

‘ _You_ always risk _your_ life,’ she pointed out, crossing her arms over her chest.

_Ladybugs don’t have nine lives,_ he wanted to say, but he swallowed it down. Instead, he said, ‘You know why I do that.’

She looked away.

_Yes, you do,_ he thought. _You know it damn well._

‘Chat, I…’ She let out a deep sigh. ‘What happened last week, on the Eiffel Tower… It was a mistake. Okay? I was stressed out, and worried about you, and my relief got a hold of me. The… the kiss. It was a mistake.’

Adrien exhaled a trembling breath. His claws were digging into his leather-clad palms, but he could barely feel it. He could barely feel anything. ‘Okay,’ he replied, because he didn’t know what else to say.

Four beeps.

‘You… you should go,’ Ladybug murmured, avoiding his gaze. ‘Before you transform back.’

_Who cares if I transform back?_ he thought bitterly. _What does it matter? I doubt it could ruin anything that hasn’t already been ruined._

But his unwillingness to stay in Ladybug’s presence for even a second longer won out, and so he extended his baton and walked up to the edge beside his partner.

 ‘See you around, then,’ he muttered, seeing her turn away just as he launched himself off the rooftop.

* * *

_What did I do wrong? What did I do that made her so hostile towards me?_

Adrien buried his face in his hands, wishing that the world would cease to exist around him. He thought something had changed… Changed for the better. But apparently, it was the complete opposite. Ladybug had kissed him, and then promptly gone on to hate him.

_Am I such a bad kisser?_ To be honest, as far as he remembered he hadn’t been much of a kisser at all. He’d been so shocked by her approach that he’d frozen completely. But she had kissed him, and then she had flirted with him, which had granted him a glimmer of hope.

And now… That was all just a pleasant memory.

His phone buzzed in front of him on the bed. Removing his hands from his face, he glanced at the blue little light blinking in the darkness. Whoever it was, he wasn’t in the mood to talk, but… Curiosity killed the cat. _Hopefully satisfaction will bring it back._

He unlocked the screen and leaned closer to read the message. It was from “Princess”. Of course it was.

**> Do u have a cataclysm to spare?  <**

Adrien frowned at the text. What was she—

**> Bc I think I’m done with this life.  <**

He stared at the screen of his phone until it went dark, then pushed the button on the side to light it up again. This was too much. He couldn’t… He couldn’t have this conversation with her. Not right now. Not ever. He was so fake, so disgustingly fake, and she didn’t deserve any of it. She deserved _so_ much better than him.

Dropping the phone onto the bed in front of him, he hid his face in his hands again and groaned. He should have seen this coming. He really should. With all those photographs of him on the walls in her bedroom, and all the stuttering whenever she tried to talk to him, and all the gushing about him that she’d done to Chat Noir… He _knew_ how she felt, and he _still_ let their… their _whatever_ go on.

And yet, it was still incredibly hard to stop it. _Why am I so stupidly stuck? Why can’t I just break this up once and for all?_ He didn’t want to think about it, but he knew he needed to. Even before Ladybug had smacked him down yet again, even when he’d lived in the hope of maybe being on pace to capture Ladybug’s heart, he hadn’t been able to end his casual relationship with Marinette. Now, when he was heartbroken again… and knowing that he’d caused Marinette to feel the same way that Ladybug had made him feel… he just couldn’t go on like this. He couldn’t go on tricking her, using her, for his own good.

His phone vibrated again. Adrien peered through his fingers and saw Marinette’s name pop up on the screen. Reluctantly—but inevitably—he leaned forward to read her new message.

**> I did something really stupid.  <**

Adrien knew that he should ignore her message. It would be best for everyone involved. And for a long moment, he managed to keep himself at bay, managed to stop himself from replying. He just stared at the screen between his fingers, watching as three little dots popped up, indicating that she was writing another message.

**> I confessed to Adrien, and he rejected me.  <**

His chest hurt. He’d rejected her. Marinette had opened up to him, told him how she felt about him, and in return, he’d smacked her down.

**> He said we’re “just friends”  <**

_I’m so damn stupid…_ Just friends, huh? “Just friends” weren’t supposed to give each other hickies or remove each other’s underwear with their teeth. “Just friends” didn’t moan each other’s names into their collarbones as they came together. What a fucking hypocrite he was.

**> He seemed really bothered. Like he wished I hadn’t said anything. I think he’s right… I was stupid to think that someone like him could ever see something in me.  <**

Adrien’s hands flew off his face and scooped up the phone before his brain had registered what he was doing.

**_> He’s an idiot. HE’S the one who doesn’t deserve YOU.  <_ **

The three dots disappeared for a moment before showing up again.

**> He hasn’t done anything wrong. I shouldn’t have forced him into that awkward situation.  <**

**_> You should stop glorifying him.  <_ **

**> Will you stop glorifying Ladybug, then?  <**

Adrien paused. He hated that she had a point.

**_> This isn’t about Ladybug  <_ **

**_> Ladybug makes mistakes, and so does Adrien  <_ **

**> But you still love her, don’t you?  <**

He swallowed, his thumbs hovering over the keyboard on the screen. Yes, he loved Ladybug. But Ladybug hadn’t toyed with his feelings the way that he had done with Marinette. Ladybug made mistakes, but Adrien had hurt Marinette knowingly. There had been no mistake there.

**_> Ladybug is sincere. Adrien isn’t.  <_ **

This time, he waited for a whole two minutes before Marinette’s reply came.

**> How do u know?  <**

**> That Adrien isn’t sincere  <**

_God damn it Agreste, you’ve done it now._

**_> … I don’t.  <_ **

**_> But I do know he’s an idiot.  <_ **

**> Yeah?  <**

**_> He rejected you, didn’t he?  <_ **

Adrien’s heart was trying to beat its way out of his chest. _What the hell am I doing? Why am I saying things like these to her?_ Was it only to make her feel better? No. Was it some twisted method of self-harm to punish himself for what he’d done to Marinette? Maybe. But he knew that wasn’t the only reason.

**_> You deserve so much better, Marinette  <_ **

**> Like what?  <**

Once again, his thumbs hesitated. He had no idea what to tell her. What did she deserve? She deserved everything she wanted. But she couldn’t have Adrien.

Now, that may sound like he thought he rose above everyone and everything else, but that really wasn’t the case. He wasn’t too good for Marinette. Just the opposite, actually. She couldn’t have Adrien, because… because Adrien…

He closed his eyes and exhaled sharply. ‘Stupid fucking…’

Marinette couldn’t have Adrien, because Adrien couldn’t trust his own feelings.

Even though he definitely _did_ feel something for her, something that went beyond mere friendship, he wouldn’t ever dare to trust that those feelings weren’t just an inevitable result of their nightly activities. He wouldn’t be able to assure himself that he didn’t just want Marinette because it was the easy choice; that he didn’t just want her because she reminded him of Ladybug and because he couldn’t ever have the superheroine herself.

She didn’t deserve that. Marinette didn’t deserve to be with someone who didn’t know if their feelings were even real. She deserved something like…

**_> Like someone who sees how amazing you are.  <_ **

Adrien waited anxiously for her reply. He watched the dots appear, then disappear, then be completely absent for several minutes, and then reappear again.

**> Can I see you tonight?  <**

Oh no.

**_> I don’t think that’s a good idea…  <_ **

**> Please? Just to talk  <**

He shouldn’t. He really shouldn’t. If he saw her, he didn’t know whether he’d be able to keep his distance from her. And he owed it to Marinette—and to himself—not to keep doing this to her. But she was obviously in distress, and he worried about what she would do if she had to spend her night all alone, only with her destructive thoughts as company.

So he swallowed down his own misery, got off the bed to find Plagg, and replied,

**_> OK.  <_ **

* * *

Despite herself, Marinette marvelled over just how much snot and mucus she had been able to dispense from her nose and mouth in the past half hour. _If buggers were coins, I’d be rich by now._

Now that she knew Chat was coming, she would have liked to clean herself up, but the tears just wouldn’t stop running down her cheeks, and so it seemed like an unnecessary effort to try to get herself to look presentable when she would just be covered in snot again a few seconds later.

She’d really screwed up this time. One, she’d kissed Chat as Ladybug. Two, she’d fled before he could ask what was happening. Three, she’d confessed to a very uncomfortable Adrien, whom she now dreaded seeing in school on Monday. Four, she’d told Chat off as Ladybug. Five… she’d asked him to meet her, even though she was actually Ladybug and she’d rejected him and she was lying to him about her identity.

She couldn’t decide which of these screw-ups was the worst one.

There was a soft knock on the skylight door.

‘Come in,’ she said, hoping that he would be able to hear. A second later, the door opened, and Chat’s shadowed face peered at her from the darkness.

‘Hey,’ he said, climbing down onto her bed and closing the door. He glanced around her bedroom before allowing his gaze to land on her. He looked even more awkward than Marinette felt, but when he took in her pathetic figure on the bed, curled up under a blanket and hugging her cat plushie tightly against her chest, his gaze softened. ‘Can I do anything for you?’

Marinette snivelled. ‘Can you make my feelings go away?’

Carefully, Chat sat down on the opposite end of the bed, pulling his legs up beneath him. ‘I’m so sorry, Marinette.’

‘Don’t be,’ she hurried to say, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. ‘I needed to snap out of my fantasy, you know.’

He looked at her for a long moment with a worried frown on his face, as if he was trying to decide whether or not to ask her to elaborate. In the end, he seemed to decide not to, because what he said was, ‘If it makes you feel any better, I got rejected today, too.’

She could barely look at him. ‘You… were?’ she whispered.

Chat nodded, letting his gaze fall to his right hand, which was absent-mindedly stroking the bedcover. ‘Ladybug kissed me the other day. I thought… I don’t know, it was a stupid thing, but I guess I thought it meant that I still had a chance with her. And then…’ He sighed. ‘She told me today that it had just been a mistake. So… yeah.’

_I’m so stupid, stupid, stupid._ How could she do that to him? She knew how he felt, and she still played with his emotions like he was just some unbreakable toy. She should have known better. Even though kissing him had been a mistake made in the heat of the moment… She should have been better.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, unable to hold in the next sob. Chat grimaced as if in pain.

‘I needed to snap out of my fantasy,’ he echoed.

They were both silent for a long moment. Marinette grabbed a paper napkin from her bedside table and blew her nose once, and Chat respectfully looked away, letting his gaze wander the walls of her bedroom. Suddenly, he froze.

‘They’re gone,’ he said. He looked back at her in surprise.

‘What?’

‘The photos,’ he clarified. ‘The photographs of… of Adrien. They’re all gone.’

Marinette flushed. She didn’t want him to believe that she was an overly dramatic teenage girl who had stomped home after being rejected and torn down each and every one of her pictures of her crush… even though that was exactly what she had done.

‘Felt weird to have them up,’ she muttered.

To Marinette’s relief, he nodded. ‘I get it.’ He looked down at the bedcover again. ‘I wish I had a bunch of photographs to tear down.’

She could understand that. It had actually felt quite good to get rid of all the photos. She’d considered burning them, but it seemed like going a touch too far. Besides, she just couldn’t bring herself to set fire to Adrien’s sweet face.

Another moment of silence passed, and yet it didn’t feel weird. It didn’t feel weird at all, just sitting there in silence with Chat Noir. When he wasn’t his cocky or punning self, he was actually pretty normal. Almost like an ordinary teenage boy.

For no apparent reason, Marinette shivered. Chat caught on to it instantly. ‘Let me get you another blanket,’ he said, leaving the bed and going on a treasure hunt below the loft. Marinette smiled to herself as she heard his quiet footsteps walking around. It felt nice having someone else in the room, and there weren’t many people she trusted as much as Chat.

He returned with a pile of blankets and pillows so tall that he looked like a pillow fort with human legs.

‘You really have a lot of cuddly stuff,’ said his muffled voice.

Marinette giggled despite herself. ‘I tend to freeze a lot in the winter.’

‘Not in the fall?’ he asked, letting the pile down in front of her before plopping down on the other side of it. ‘Are you telling me I brought all of this here, to her majesty the princess, for no reason?’

She tugged at one of the blankets. It was her favourite, because it had never been washed, which meant that it was still fluffy—and disgusting. ‘It was sweet of you,’ she assured him. ‘But I trust that you will put all of it back where you found it later, my brave knight.’

Even out of the corner of her eye, she could see his lips bend into a smirk.

‘With all due respect, princess: you wish.’

She pulled the blanket around her shoulders, letting out a soft sigh in content at the warmth it gave. When she next looked at Chat, his eyes were half-closed, as if he was about to fall asleep.

‘You tired?’ she asked.

His eyes flew open again. ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Just… thinking.’ Then he seemed to study her face for a moment. ‘What about you? Are you tired?’

As if on cue, she yawned. ‘A little.’

All the crying had worn her out; the truth was that she wanted nothing more than to cuddle down beneath the pile of blankets and sleep until all the bad feelings had gone away.

Chat moved as if to stand up. ‘Maybe I should let you—’

‘No!’ she exclaimed, startling both Chat and herself. He froze, staring at her in surprise. ‘Uh—um, I mean…’ She took a deep breath, held it in for three seconds, and exhaled slowly. ‘Do you… want to stay for a while longer?’

His face softened. ‘Sure, Mari.’

He got off the bed, but only to turn off the ceiling lamp and light the night lamp on her bedside table instead. Marinette scooted in towards the wall and patted the space next to her. To her delight, he accepted her invitation and slid into bed beside her, pulling one of the blankets over his body. She looked up at him in hesitation.

‘Is it okay if I…?’

In a silent reply, Chat wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer. She relaxed into him, revelling in the sound of his heartbeat.

For a long while, they sat just like that; Marinette listening to Chat’s slow breaths and steady heartbeats, Chat leaning his head against hers and making little circles on her arm with his fingers. It was hypnotising, the way his body moved almost like the ticktock of a clock next to her, except this clock was warm and comfy and safe. _What if I could stay here forever?_ she thought to herself, closing her eyes and relaxing even further. _What if it could be like this always?_

But then Chat’s ring beeped, and she had to open her eyes again.

‘Oh,’ she said.

‘Mhm.’

‘Rule number one,’ she said.

‘Yeah.’

‘I don’t mind,’ she said.

He chuckled softly. ‘Yeah? You want me to reveal my identity?’

‘If it means you’ll stay…’

He stroked her hair with his free hand, then leaned in to place a careful kiss on her forehead. ‘I’ll stay if you promise not to peek.’

She dutifully closed her eyes. ‘I swear on my ungodly pile of blankets that I won’t look.’

‘It _is_ an unnaturally large pile of blankets… I guess I can trust you, then.’

With a victorious smile, she nodded against his chest and almost purred when he stroked her hair again.

‘Such an unnaturally large pile that it can’t hurt to take a few more things from it,’ he continued, leaning forward slightly—to Marinette’s dismay—to grab three pillows and at least as many blankets from the pile. The rest, he kicked down to the foot of the bed, and then he pulled Marinette closer to him before bringing her down with him into horizontal position. He placed the pillows behind them, building up a soft little base, and then he wrapped the blankets around them. The last thing he did was to turn off the lamp.

‘You’re not looking, are you?’ he asked quietly. She shook her head.

‘Nope.’

‘Well, then. Claws in.’

The only tell of a difference in his appearance was the change in texture of his clothes against her skin; from rough leather to soft fabric. Marinette fiddled tentatively with the bottom of his shirt.

‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, placing another kiss on her forehead.

Slowly, carefully, she let her fingers search their way in beneath the fabric, sighing softly when she felt the ridges of his stomach.

‘I really like your skin,’ she murmured against his neck. His arms wrapped themselves more tightly around her, but he didn’t say anything. Marinette let herself be swept away by his calm breathing and the warmth of his body against her, feeling how she slid further and further into the land of the sleeping.

_How is it that I can feel so incredibly safe with him?_ she wondered distantly. Sure, he was her superhero partner, and she always felt safe fighting Akumas with him, but this was different. This was another type of safety entirely.

‘You know, Chat,’ she whispered, ‘I think I’ll be fine.’

She could feel his breath on her nose; on her cheeks; on her lips. ‘Yeah?’

Marinette yawned. ‘It’s just a crush. It’ll pass.’

‘That’s very optimistic, princess,’ he whispered, his lips briefly touching her temple. ‘I’m proud of you.’

She let her hand move up to cup his cheek, feeling him lean into her touch. ‘I think you will be fine too, Chat.’

He waited a moment to answer. ‘You do?’

‘Mm-hm.’ Cuddling further into his arms, she let out a content sigh. ‘Because cats always land on their feet.’

His next breath trembled slightly. ‘Yeah,’ he whispered into her hair. ‘I guess they do.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What is all this fluff doing in my angst?
> 
> (No but seriously, this chapter was such a blast to write.)


	13. Friends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marinette and civilian!Chat play dressup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this is a bit later than usual. My energy level has been down in the dumps these past few days.
> 
> Also - you may have noticed I started replying to all comments! And I plan to keep doing that, so comment away! 
> 
> Enjoy :)

Slowly, Adrien opened his eyes, peering in the light that filtered in through the skylight door above. Yawning softly, he stretched his whole body out on the bed. _Must have slept late,_ he thought. _Wonder why Natalie hasn’t woken me up yet._

As his mind began to clear, he frowned up at the skylight door. _Wait, since when do I have—_

‘Mm,’ a sleepy voice sighed to his left. Adrien froze. In an excruciatingly slow movement, he turned his head towards the sound.

A sleepy girl with dark, messy hair was lying next to him, breathing slowly and deeply. _Marinette._

Adrien’s hands flew up to cover her eyes. The girl woke up instantly.

‘AAAAAH—AKUMA!!!’

She jerked in an attempt to break loose, but Adrien moved one hand to hold her in place against his chest, silently panicking over whether she’d already seen him or not. Marinette kicked wildly, swearing under her breath as she clawed his forearms.

‘It’s me! It’s… It’s Chat!’

At the sound of his voice, she stopped kicking, then let go of his arms. Her chest heaved.

‘Ch… Chat,’ she breathed. ‘Why are you…?’ She froze. ‘Shit.’

‘Yeah,’ he agreed, taking a deep breath to calm himself. ‘Listen, I’ll remove my hands, but you really can’t look.’

Marinette nodded. Carefully, he lifted his hands off her, moving back to sit up and gauge the situation.

He was in Marinette’s bedroom. _Check._

He was not in his superhero suit. _Check._

He had no idea what time it was, his father was probably raging over his absence, he didn’t know where his phone was, and Marinette might know his real identity. _Check._

‘Did you,’ he started in a trembling voice, ‘did you…?’ _But if she had, she wouldn’t have been sleeping so calmly next to me, would she?_

‘N-no,’ she said from her side of the bed. She was covering her own eyes now, but she had crawled up so that she was sitting with her back against the wall. ‘You _know_ I wouldn’t peek. I was the one who made up the first rule, remember?’

He exhaled a relieved breath. ‘Yeah. I know.’ Feeling the urge to laugh, he ran a hand through his hair and got off the bed. ‘I shouldn’t have stayed.’

Marinette hesitated. ‘I’m glad you did.’

He turned to look at her. Something whooshed in his chest when he saw her sitting there, messy hair and pyjamas, covering her eyes just to keep his identity safe. _I don’t deserve her… But I’ll be happy for as long as she allows me to be by her side._

‘Me too,’ he admitted.

Even though his father would install double locks on all windows and doors after this, he was happy he’d stayed the night. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so well-rested. Besides, it had been for a good reason, too; he’d helped a friend.

‘M-maybe… Maybe you don’t have to leave yet?’ Marinette asked quietly.

‘… No?’

She squirmed on the bed. ‘I mean… It’s Sunday. Maybe we could hang out?’

He grimaced. ‘You’d be all over the Ladyblog.’

‘You wouldn’t have to transform,’ she said.

That made him pause. ‘What about the first rule?’

Marinette was silent for a moment as she thought. Then she asked, ‘Do you trust me?’

‘Of course.’

‘Then turn around.’

He hesitated only for a moment before doing as she said. Behind his back, he heard her get off the bed, then leave the loft. Adrien stayed put, true to his words, but he couldn’t help but get curious—and a tiiiiiny bit worried.

_What is she doing? Is she fetching the blindfold?_

Nah, that would be strange, considering the circumstances.

… Which promptly brought him back to her confession yesterday, and how he’d rejected her so hard that she’d torn down all her photographs of him, cried her heart out in bed and pleaded with Chat Noir to come distract her from her own emotions. And so he instantly felt bad again.

‘I have my eyes closed,’ Marinette’s voice said behind him. ‘Please turn around.’

He turned, and what he saw first were Marinette’s outstretched hands. One hand was turned up so that the palm was facing the ceiling and holding two things: a red baseball cap and a pair of large, black sunglasses. The other hand held a dark blue hoodie.

‘Uhh,’ he said.

‘Put them on,’ she urged him.

_Doesn’t hurt to try, I guess,_ he told himself, and so he pulled the hoodie on—it was a little tight, but he could work with it—put the cap over his hair, and placed the sunglasses on his nose. The bedroom went a couple shades darker.

‘Okay?’ he said, puzzled.

Marinette opened her eyes.

His heart jumped. ‘What are you—’

But one corner of her mouth twitched, and her lips pulled into a smile, which soon grew into a grin, and then she laughed.

‘It’s perfect!’ she exclaimed. She gave an appreciative nod, eyeing the way the hoodie clung to his body. ‘It’s an old sweater that’s been ruined by the dryer. Way too big for me, but it works on you. Pull the hood over your head, will you?’

He did as she asked, then watched as she studied his face in amusement.

‘You don’t even look like Chat Noir,’ she said. ‘You look…’

‘Like a stalker?’ he offered, prompting her to laugh.

‘Maybe a little.’

To his surprise, she reached up to touch his cheek and chin with her slender fingers. He parted his lips almost subconsciously, fixed in place by her intense gaze. Suddenly, the air felt too thin and emptied of oxygen. She smiled softly.

‘You have really great cheekbones. Anyone ever told you that?’

_Only a million different people,_ he thought, _but never like this._

‘Jawline, too,’ she continued. She let her gaze slide downwards to take in his shoulders, chest, waist and hips. ‘And figure…’ Her eyes snapped up to his again. ‘I bet you’d make a great model.’

_You don’t say…_

Then she seemed to realise what she was saying, because she widened her eyes and withdrew her hand. ‘I—I just mean, because I m-make my own, my own clothes, um, I know h-how the fashion industry, uh, thinks—’

‘It’s fine,’ he said with a smile. ‘Thank you.’

Marinette blushed and looked away. ‘So d-do you think you could stay for a little… a little bit?’

He frowned. He didn’t like the fact that she’d started stammering around Chat as well as around Adrien. Confident Marinette could make crazy things with his heart.

_Maybe because she reminds me of Ladybug,_ he thought bitterly.

‘I… guess,’ he said, deciding that he could text Natalie and hope for the best. His father was certain to be angry already, so it’s not like it would matter much if he stayed out for longer.

When he’d returned from the Akuma fight yesterday to do the photo shoots his father had planned for him, he’d been so dejected by what Ladybug had told him that he’d done a horrible job, and been berated for it by Gabriel.

_“A professional never lets his personal life get in the way of his work,”_ he had told Adrien. And he was right. Maybe Adrien wasn’t a professional. Maybe he was just an overly sensitive teenager.

The thought of their exchange made the anger bubble within him. He clenched his hands into fists.

‘You know what? I’ll stay.’

The grin Marinette gave him would by itself have been worth every single reprimand his father could give him.

‘Awesome!’

* * *

When Marinette had asked Chat to stay, she hadn’t been clear on exactly what she wanted to get out of it. Part of her had whispered that it was _a_ _bad idea_ , that she had to _stop using the kitty_ , but the loudest and therefore most convincing voice had yelled at her that she had to _get over Adrien_ , and what better way to do that than to exchange him for Chat?

That being said, she had no intention of getting naked with the cat today. All she wanted was a normal day with someone who could make her laugh, who could make her feel safe, who could make her yearn for something other than Adrien Agreste.

And civilian!Chat sure could.

When she’d first convinced him to leave the house with her, he’d been cautious and stiff, worried that someone would recognise him.

‘Trust me, you look nothing like Chat,’ she’d assured him, and when he’d seen with his own two eyes that no one so much as batted an eyelid in their direction, he’d finally relaxed.

‘Who do I look like, then?’ he’d asked casually, but she could hear in his voice that he was fishing for information.

‘Are you worried that I secretly know who you are?’ she’d retorted with a cheeky smile.

He’d shrugged and waved her off then. ‘Pssh, if you did, we wouldn’t be here.’

That comment had made her wonder. Was there some reason she’d be disappointed or angry if she knew his true identity? It didn’t make sense. She couldn’t possibly know the boy behind the cat mask, because if she did, she would have recognised him, and that was that.

_But Chat doesn’t recognise you as Ladybug,_ a small voice within reminded her. She ignored it. Chat was much more oblivious than her.

When civilian!Chat finally relaxed, he was really fun to hang out with. More and more of his silly personality showed the longer time they spent together. He would joke about her being the clumsiest he’d ever seen when she almost tripped on a leaf; he would challenge her to a punning competition and make a show out of kissing the top of her hand when she beat him; he would convince her to try on a Chat Noir costume in a shop and pretend-swoon when she struck a pose in it. And even despite this, he somehow managed to make her feel like _she_ was the fun one, by laughing and grinning and—once—even _crying of laughter_ at her silliness. He made her feel appreciated; made her feel like he truly enjoyed spending time with her.

That’s why she barely even reacted when he, once the sun started going down and the air turned colder, wrapped an arm around her as they walked along the Seine. Instead, she leaned her head against his shoulder and closed her eyes, trusting him to lead her forward. They walked in silence for a while, and Marinette thought that it must be the ultimate sign of comfort that you could be completely silent with someone for several minutes at a time and still feel safe. She listened to the sounds of the city, the cries of the seagulls, the calm splashes of the water below, and the familiar rhythm of civilian!Chat’s breathing beside her, and she felt more at ease than she had done in a long time.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him from below, feeling her stomach flutter when he returned her gaze with a soft smile. He was still wearing the stupidly large sunglasses, the baseball cap and the hood, but even though she’d told him no one would be able to recognise him like that, she thought she could see signs of her kitty in the way that he looked at her and even the way that his jaw muscles tensed as he swallowed.

Marinette frowned. ‘Is everything okay?’

His smile widened. ‘Yeah. I’ve had a great Sunday,’ he said, squeezing her shoulder with his hand. ‘I wish it never had to end.’

She sighed deeply. ‘Me too.’

_I wish I never had to go back to school and face Adrien again, but… I’m going to have to talk to him eventually._ Hell, she hadn’t even _thought_ about him during her expedition with Chat, which was amazing. But how healthy was it, really? She hated to admit it, but maybe she needed to face reality in order to properly get over him. One good day with another boy didn’t really mean anything, did it?

‘Do you…’ She hesitated. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to face Ladybug again?’

Civilian!Chat took a moment to answer. ‘I… Yeah.’ He bent his neck to glance down at her. ‘I have to, you know? We’re superheroes. We can’t let personal problems get between us.’

Marinette nodded, ashamed that she’d treated him as she had. She’d been upset because of what had happened with Adrien, but that had been no excuse to take it out on Chat. He was in love with Ladybug, and she’d told him their kiss had meant nothing; when she thought about it, it felt way worse than what Adrien had done to her. _He rejected me, but he did it kindly._ Until the Akuma had shown up and he’d ordered her to leave without him, but people could act uncharacteristically when they were scared.

She pulled away from civilian!Chat and stopped walking. He stopped too, cocking his head to the side in a silent question. Taking a deep breath, Marinette gazed towards the sun as it lingered above a rooftop; the last few rays of sunshine. She walked up to the low wall standing between her and the river below.

‘You told me that Adrien doesn’t deserve me,’ she began hesitantly. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see civilian!Chat study her. Her palms pushed against the rough stone of the wall. ‘Ladybug doesn’t deserve you, either.’

For a moment, everything became still and quiet; even the world around them seemed to pause.

Then, without a word, he walked up beside her, turned around and leaned back against the wall. His gaze fixed itself on the ground.

_What is he thinking about right now?_ she wondered.

Out loud, she said, ‘You’re funny, and kind, and caring, and intelligent…’ She made a vague gesture towards his body. ‘… You’re also smoking hot beneath your cat suit, but that’s probably beside the point.’

He let out an amused exhalation and gave her a soft smile, still choosing not to speak. So she went on by herself.

‘The point is, you’re a catch, and Ladybug’s an idiot for not seeing that.’

She turned back to the river again with a sigh. _Maybe if I hadn’t been so stuck on Adrien…_

Beside her, civilian!Chat raised a hand but let it fall again.

‘Marinette…’

She turned to face him, and immediately wished that she’d been able to see his eyes, but the sunglasses blocked them completely. Yet, only by seeing the lower part of his face, she could discern that he was unsure how to react to her compliments. His top lip slid in beneath his teeth, then out again, both lips pursing thoughtfully, and his jaw tensed and relaxed. He was clearly thinking hard about something.

‘You don’t have to say anything,’ Marinette assured him. ‘It’s okay. I know what it feels like to have your crush insulted for not seeing how supposedly amazing you are. I know it’s hard to take in.’ She sighed. ‘Hell, I don’t think I’ve taken it in yet…’

‘Marinette,’ he said again, softer this time. ‘Thank you.’

Something about the way his voice trembled slightly at the end made her chest constrict. _I don’t deserve him. I really don’t._

He held out his hands, palms up. Hesitantly, she placed her hands in his, watching as he brought them up to his lips and placed one kiss on each of them. Marinette blushed. She expected him to let go of her after that, but instead, he pulled her closer and reached behind his back to wrap her arms around his torso before snaking his own arms around her shoulders. He pressed his lips against her forehead and held them there for a moment.

‘You’re a great friend, Mari,’ he whispered. ‘I’m so glad that I met you.’

She wanted to cry. She wanted to curl up beneath a blanket on her bed and just cry. But most of all, she wanted to transform into Ladybug and tell him how sorry she was, how much she loved him, how much she would _always_ love him, and how indescribably happy she was that _she_ had met _him._

She couldn’t, though. Their casual relationship had gone way past that point now, and if she transformed into Ladybug in front of him, she was terrified that it would break him, that it would ruin everything she had built up in the past months: their friendship, his much more regular eating, his trust… and if she lost him, if she lost Chat, she didn’t know what she would do. She didn’t know that she’d survive without him.

So instead of doing what she really wanted to do, she squeezed him tightly and said, ‘I’m really glad I have you too, Chat.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Join me next time for some Adrinette (inter)action!


	14. Reverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Adrien realises that he's utterly fucked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yo! Lots of stuff going on this week! Including, among others:
> 
> \- My birthday happened  
> \- Turns out I need glasses wHICH I'M sUpER EXciTeD fOR  
> \- I joined a mentorship programme (AS A MENTOR!!!!)
> 
> ... also, I wrote some Adrinette for you. Enjoy <3

Adrien dreaded the moment that he would have to meet with Marinette in school. He knew he had to tell her how sorry he was, but he had no idea how she would take it. The night before Monday morning, he dreamt feverish nightmares about it. In one, Marinette would arrive in class with a 3-inch hole straight through her chest, and she would walk up to him like a zombie, grab his wrist and shove his hand through the gory hole. In another, he would meet up with her outside of the school building and attempt to give her a hug, but she would kick him in the chest and then stomp on his face with a stiletto. In yet another, she would cry and cry and cry until her skin dried out and the little body fat she had melted and all that was left was just a dry-heaving skeleton.

Needless to say, he didn’t exactly feel well-rested when his alarm went off in the morning. He considered calling in sick, and felt relief spread through his body for a moment as the thought of not having to face Marinette just yet took root in his mind. But he knew better than to postpone the inevitable, and Natalie would see right through any pretences.

So he dragged himself to school.

‘Jeez, kid,’ Plagg complained when he peered out of Adrien’s shirt on the way to school. ‘Can you walk any more slowly?’

Pressing his index finger against Plagg’s forehead, Adrien pushed him inside and out of sight again. ‘Why are _you_ so eager?’ he mumbled.

‘Why? _Why?_ Because next to cheese, watching you embarrass yourself in front of girls with pigtails is my favourite thing in the world.’

‘I’m not going to embarrass myself,’ Adrien huffed.

Plagg snuggled into the inside pocket. ‘We’ll see about that, champ.’

‘Hey, there he is! Lover boy!’

The boy froze as he heard Alya call him from staircase outside of the towering school building. He looked up and saw his three best friends standing at it its top, their attention now fully fixed on him as he stopped right by the bottom of the staircase. Alya was grinning like crazy, Nino smiled pleasantly, and Marinette— _oh god, Marinette_ —gave him a friendly smile followed by a discreet nod.

He blinked in confusion. She was… smiling? And did that nod mean that everything was okay between them? _How in the world… Is this another dream? A suspiciously happy dream?_

‘Hey guys,’ he said cautiously when he reached the top of the stairs. ‘What’s up?’

‘We were just talking about you,’ Nino said.

‘You were?’ Adrien asked, frowning.

Alya elbowed him lightly and gave him a wink. ‘Are you free this weekend?’

He glanced at Marinette, who was just tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. She smiled, prompting Adrien to blush and turn back to Alya.

‘Uhh… That depends on what you’re up to?’

‘Alya’s cousins are vacationing in Italy, and they said we could stay at their house while they’re away!’ Nino explained eagerly. ‘They live in this big-ass mansion out in the woods.’

‘It’s not _that_ big,’ Alya said, rolling her eyes. ‘It’s basically just a cottage. But it’s a pretty cool place. We’re watching horror movies and plundering their wine cellar. You in?’

Adrien hesitated. ‘I don’t know…’

He wanted to go with them, but he didn’t know if Marinette would be fine with it. She seemed all right now, but… Was that just a show she was putting on? Would it be awkward if they all went away together?

But then Marinette cocked her head to the side and gave him a mischievous smirk that almost reminded him of his own alter-ego, and she said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll protect you if you get scared.’

And she ended her remark with a _wink._

Adrien found he suddenly couldn’t remember how to breathe. He also seemed to have forgotten how to speak, because all that came out was, ‘Uh-uhm, y-yeah ha-ha, that’s… that’s, uh… nice!!!’

Nino dunked his back with a laugh. ‘You okay there?’

Grateful for the distraction, Adrien tore his gaze away from a stumped Marinette and focused all his attention on Nino. ‘Yep! Just perfect! I’m, uh… great. Let’s go inside?’

While they walked through the entrance, Adrien heard a muffled snicker from the inside of his shirt. He made a mental note to cancel his next standing order of cheese.

* * *

 

Marinette wasn’t sure what to feel. Usually, _she_ was the one who stammered and stuttered around Adrien, so the fact that _he_ suddenly couldn’t speak in her vicinity—even after he’d rejected her—was almost too unbelievable to be true.

Obviously, it didn’t mean that he had any feelings for her. He’d made that very clear. But something was up with the boy, and the only thing she could think of was that he must be nervous about seeing her after his rejection of her feelings.

Well, he didn’t have to be. Marinette had woken up strangely serene this morning, even after having spent last night twisting and turning in bed. She’d had a great Sunday, and the fact that all photographs of Adrien were gone from her walls made a huge improvement to her usual morning anxiety. No beautiful boy, nothing to angst about.

… It might have helped that she’d torn them all down in a burning fury, accompanied by a playlist of the roughest and loudest songs of Jagged Stone.

Since then, she’d obviously calmed down and seen Adrien’s rejection for what it really was—a friend’s flustered attempt at saving a hopeless situation. He didn’t have any romantic feelings for her; so what? It wasn’t his fault. His reaction was completely expected. She shouldn’t have overreacted to it. And she shouldn’t punish him for being honest with her. In fact, she should thank him for it.

So that’s why she had to work hard to get over him. For his sake. For her sake. For the sake of their friendship.

It was still _hard_ , though.

Especially when the damn guy subconsciously (or consciously, who knew) _modelled_ every other minute.

She watched him turn his face towards the window, chin resting in his hand, pencil bobbing slightly up and down where it hung from one corner of his mouth, eyes bored but dreamy. _Pose 1._

She sighed as he ran a hand over his hair to smoothen it out, his neck bending in just the right angle to show her the perfect lines of his jawbone and chin as well as how his adam’s apple moved when he swallowed, and his hand continued all the way over his head and down to the back of his neck, where it stopped to rest, showing long, graceful fingers scratching at perfectly unblemished skin for a moment before the hand continued melting down off his neck and back to his desk. _Pose 2._

She cursed inwardly when, after the bell rung, he leaned back with one arm hanging leisurely over the backrest, turning his chin upwards and his neck around in another perfect angle so that he could speak to Alya, and his bangs fell to the side and his eyes glittered like a damn dragon’s treasure, and Marinette couldn’t even hear what he was saying because she was too busy trying not to focus on how the muscles in his annoyingly handsome face moved as he spoke. _Pose 3._

‘Yes!’ Alya exclaimed before elbowing Marinette. ‘You hear that, Dupain-Cheng?’

She jumped, turning wide eyes to her best friend. ‘Wha?’

‘Adrien can come with us this weekend! Isn’t it great?’

Marinette glanced at Adrien, who (thank god) had abandoned his third pose and instead turned around like a normal fucking human. He gave her an insecure smile as he waited for her reaction.

_It’s not his fault,_ she reminded herself. _He’s a friend. We’re friends. We’re best friends. And I love him—as a friend._

Taking a deep breath, she got up from her seat and said, ‘That’s amazing! I’m looking forward to it.’ And without even considering the consequences, she added, ‘I’m sure glad to be spending the weekend with _such a great friend_.’

Just before Adrien turned back around, she could see his smile evaporate and change into disappointment. _God damn it, why am I such a jerk?_

In an attempt to save the situation, she paused as she walked past him towards the front of the room, placing a hand on his shoulder. He turned to her with a cautious look in his eyes, so she made sure to look as warm and reassuring as humanly possible.

‘Seriously, I’m glad you can come.’

Her heart almost cracked in half when she saw the careful, quietly hopeful little smile that lit up his face. He was such a beautiful person, not only on the outside but also very much on the inside, and she wanted him to be happy and safe. She needed to remember that.

‘Me too,’ he said.

* * *

 

**> Wanna come over later?  <**

**_> I have a family thing… :( But I can talk a bit right now?  <_ **

Adrien only had to wait a couple of seconds before the phone started buzzing in his hand, and the name “Princess” appeared in large letters on the screen. His thumb slid up to answer the call as he fell backwards into his sofa.

‘Yo ‘sup,’ he said, smiling when he heard a muffled giggle on the other side of the line.

‘Hey howdy,’ she replied in a cheery voice. ‘What’s crackalackin’? You managed to squeeze me into your very busy schedule?’

‘Oh, I can always make room for a pretty girl like you, _princesse_ ,’ Adrien said before he could stop himself. He rolled his eyes and cursed inwardly. _Don’t forget who you’re talking to. Don’t forget that you just flirted with someone who’s in love with another part of you. Don’t forget that she’s your best friend._

‘You flatter-pattering kittycat,’ Marinette answered.

‘Pfft,’ Adrien laughed. ‘Flatter-pattering? You need to work on your cat puns.’

‘How lucky I am to have such a legendary pun master at my disposal, then.’

‘Lessons from the master don’t come cheap.’

‘Of course they don’t. What’s the price?’

Adrien rolled over on his stomach, resting his chin in his hand as he considered his options. Had things been different, he might have used this opportunity to flirt her socks off, but he had to be better than that now. No more mindless flirting. No more playing with his best friend’s emotions.

‘… A baked good of your choice,’ he decided on.

‘Uh-huh,’ she drawled. ‘What about a chocolate-filled croissant?’

He hesitated. ‘That’s… an option.’

‘Too bad you can’t come over, then. I’d bake one personally just for you.’

Adrien immediately perked up. ‘You would?’

‘Definitely. It won’t do to give my kitty second-rate pastries.’

‘I’d hardly call your parents’ pastries second-rate,’ he scoffed.

‘You haven’t tasted my croissants,’ she teased.

‘True…’

He gazed out at the rain outside the floor-to-ceiling windows, fighting a silent battle with himself over whether or not to ask the question he was burning to know the answer to. On one hand, maybe it would be better if he didn’t know. On the other hand, if he knew, he might be able to act more considerate around Marinette. On the third hand, curiosity killed the cat… But on the fourth…

‘So do you have any plans for the weekend?’ he asked as casually as he could, deciding to take the patient route.

‘Actually, yes,’ Marinette replied. ‘I’m going to a house in the woods with a couple of friends.’

‘Aha… Friends, huh? That’s, let’s see… that brunette, right? Alicia?’

‘Alya,’ Marinette corrected.

Adrien rolled his eyes. Why did she have to be so secretive? ‘So… Alya and… someone else? From your class?’

‘Yep.’

‘… Huh.’

He just couldn’t come up with a way to get her to elaborate without being way too obvious about it. _Damn it._

But then, Marinette let out a heavy sigh. ‘Adrien’s coming.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Yeah? How do you feel about that?’

There was a brief pause where he thought he could hear the sound of blinds opening.

‘I don’t know,’ she said in a distant tone. ‘I don’t think… I feel anything in particular.’

Adrien’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline.

‘You don’t?’ he asked before he could stop himself.

What was that supposed to mean? She didn’t feel anything at all? Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

‘Can I be frank with you?’ Marinette asked.

He sat up straight, suddenly worried. ‘Y-yeah?’

There was another pause, and then a sigh. ‘Adrien’s a dream boat, I mean for real. He poses like a god damn super model every other second without even realising it, and it makes it really hard to concentrate in class when you have the freaking _sun_ constantly blinding you from the front row. But… I think I’m starting to get over him. He’s an amazing person, an amazing friend, but maybe… Maybe he’s been right all along. Maybe that’s where our relationship is supposed to stay? In the friend zone?’

Adrien blinked, speechless. ‘Um—’

‘I know you don’t like him,’ Marinette continued, ‘but he’s not the douche you think he is. His rejection was awkward, but he didn’t mean to hurt me. And I really think he appreciates me as a friend. Maybe even… a best friend.’

‘I—I’m sure he does—’

‘And you know what? He’s my best friend too. I’ve had this stupid crush on him for years, but when I think about it, maybe that’s just because I look up to him so much. I mean, he’s a super cute model who’s also one of the nicest people I know, and somehow he always manages to be so… so… _hopeful_ , and optimistic, and cheerful, even though his father can be an absolute dick sometimes. Adrien never complains. He really should, to be honest, but he never does. And he always puts others first; _always._ He’s a cinnamon roll if I ever saw one.’

Adrien had to lay his phone down against the seating of the sofa for a moment to breathe. Tears were burning behind his eyes, threatening to break loose. He felt like Marinette had just reached into his chest and squeezed his heart in her delicate hands, and it made him feel safe and exposed and loved and scared all at the same time.

Somewhere far away, he heard Marinette continue her monologue.

Taking a trembling breath, he brought the phone back up.

‘… starting to cool off. And I get it if you don’t believe me, because you’ve seen me at my worst, I mean you’ve… you’ve seen the photographs, for chrissake. But I think I’m in a good place right now. I think… I’m ready to be friends with Adrien. I love him—but as a friend. So, yeah, it’s going to be a little weird to spend the weekend with him, but it’s also going to be really fun, as always with him. Because he’s such a cool guy. And I’m so happy I get to be friends with a person like that.’

When she stopped talking, Adrien realised he was chewing furiously on his bottom lip. He never did that. He wasn’t allowed to do that. The lips were a definite no-no in his profession. But right now, he found he wasn’t able to stop.

He also realised that Marinette expected him to say something.

And he had no idea what to respond.

‘Wow,’ he said, exhaling sharply, ‘that’s… uh… very insightful of you.’

He hadn’t expected her to make a confession like that. He’d just wanted to know whether she was happy or sad that he was going to the house with her. But now… he didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know what to _feel._

‘Thanks,’ Marinette said, and she sounded so tired.

‘How… how did you… come to that conclusion?’ he asked quietly.

At that question, something changed drastically in Marinette’s tone of voice. ‘Uhhhh—how did I—I, um? That’s, ha-ha, that’s a good! Yeah! A good… one. Um. I don’t know?’ She giggled nervously. ‘It came to me in a dream?’

Adrien frowned at the sudden change. ‘Okay?’

‘You know what, Chat, I’m really tired. Thank you for listening to my nagging and all, but I think I’m gonna have to go and—’

‘Marinette,’ he interjected. She fell silent.

‘… Y-yeah?’

Adrien dug his fingernails into the fabric of the sofa. He was feeling strange, real strange, and even stranger words were bubbling up from the deep, wanting to burst out through his mouth and shout the truth into his phone, but he kept his lips pinched shut, because even in his confused state, he knew those words could ruin everything. _Don’t be a jerk. Don’t say it. Don’t be that guy. Just don’t._

He was a disaster, she was a blessing, and he couldn’t bear to hurt her a second time. Even if that meant he had to live up to the cinnamon role yet again.

‘… Good night.’

He heard Marinette exhale softly on the other side. ‘Yeah… good night, Chat. Sweet dreams.’

‘You too,’ he whispered.

Then the line clicked and went quiet.

Never in his life had Adrien had a stronger impulse to _destroy_ something.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come back next time, when Adrien escalates his fuckedness by fucking things up another notch!


	15. Transformation, pt 1

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which things escalate to the point of no return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess what I had today? A chocolate-filled croissant <3
> 
> There's a reference to Avicii in this chapter, who was a Swedish DJ/producer. He committed suicide this April, and I was devastated, because his music has played an important part in my life. Figured I'd honor him when I had the chance.
> 
> Anyway - enjoy having your hearts wrenched :)

Adrien couldn’t believe his ears. ‘Seriously?’ he exclaimed in frustration. ‘I can’t even go to a cabin with my friends over the weekend without my bodyguard?’

Nathalie didn’t move a muscle in her face as she peered down at Adrien through her glasses, but he could see her hands clench the tablet device a little more firmly against her chest.

‘He’s a professional,’ she said. ‘I’m sure you will barely even notice his presence.’

‘He’s _huge_ ,’ Adrien dead-panned.

‘Your father cares about your safety,’ she said, ignoring Adrien’s last remark. ‘I don’t want to hear any complaints about this. You should be glad he lets you go at all.’

He winced and looked away. Was this his father’s idea of being charitable?

‘Fine,’ he muttered, shoving another forkful of food into his mouth.

Nathalie sighed and left him alone by the table. When she was out of sight, Adrien brought up his phone and typed up a text message to Nino.

**_> Gorilla’s apparently joining us this weekend…  <_ **

**> Great! That means we have a chauffeur ;D  <**

* * *

Well, Nino was right. Going to the cottage by car was way more comfortable than going by bus and then walking the last kilometre. Besides, when he was joined by his three best friends, it wasn’t so bad to ride with the ever-so-stoic Gorilla.

‘Oooh, this one’s a must on road trips!’ Alya exclaimed from the back as a new track started streaming from her Spotify. She started to sing. ‘ _Once upon a younger year, when all our shadows disappeared, the animals inside came out to play~_ ’

Adrien nodded to the rhythm. ‘This is Avicii, isn’t it?’

‘You know it! God, I love him!’

‘Ah! Stop flailing around so much, Alya,’ Marinette laughed. Adrien grinned, turning around in his seat to watch the spectacle. Alya was waving her arms around to the music, alternating between bumping into Marinette and Nino on her sides. Marinette tried to protect herself by holding up her arms, but Nino seemed to decide that it was best to just join the dark side, and so he started dancing along with his girlfriend.

‘Come on, Marinette, this is the best part,’ Alya exclaimed. ‘ _He said, "One day you'll leave this world behind, so live a life you will remember!"’_

Adrien didn’t know the lyrics, but he did his best to sing along anyway, laughing when Alya scowled at his massacre of what she apparently considered to be a literary masterpiece. Even the Gorilla seemed to enjoy himself, seeing how he wasn’t scowling quite as much as usual. Maybe he liked Avicii.

And so the road trip went on, until at last they arrived at the cottage. As soon as the car had stopped, Alya threw herself out of it—which was a feat considering that she had the seat in the middle—and started dancing towards the front door. Adrien chuckled as he unbuckled his seat belt and opened the door.

‘Last one inside is a Chloé!’ Alya shouted while she unlocked the door. Adrien watched Marinette stumble over her own feet in her sudden hurry to get inside.

He turned to the Gorilla before following the others. ‘You can take that little guest house over there,’ he said, nodding towards the smaller house on the site. ‘Try to stay out of our way, please?’

His bodyguard just grunted, but Adrien took it as a confirmation, and so he grabbed his messenger bag and walked after his friends.

Marinette gave him an amused glance when he closed the door.

‘Hello, Chloé,’ she teased. He rolled his eyes.

‘Ha-ha. You know, if she was here, we’d all be dead by now.’

‘She’d _wish_ we were, but it takes more than just a few jabs to get at us.’ She winked, sending his heart sprawling. ‘Let’s see what Alya and Nino are up to.’

‘Do we really want to know?’ he murmured, prompting Marinette to giggle.

‘They’re not _that_ desperate. Come on.’

It turned out that Alya had already decided who would sleep where, and apparently she would accept no complaints whatsoever, because, quote, “logistics are complicated and everyone can’t always be happy with the outcome”, unquote.

Not that the logistics seemed to be that complicated in this case, but that was apparently irrelevant.

‘Nino and I will share one of the double beds, obviously,’ Alya began, ‘and Mari and Adrien will share the other.’

Marinette’s chin dropped to the floor. ‘What do you mean, _share_?’

Alya smirked. ‘I mean that there are only two beds, and Nino and I are sleeping in one of them.’

Adrien glanced at Marinette, whose face was redder than a tomato. ‘I can sleep on the couch,’ he suggested in an attempt to make her feel a little better.

‘No one is sleeping on the couch,’ Alya said. ‘Come on, you get one blanket each, and it’s a large bed. It’s not like you _have_ _to_ spoon.’

Adrien almost said, _I wouldn’t mind,_ but fortunately, he stopped himself in time.

Marinette gave her best friend a death glare. ‘You know I’m seeing someone.’

Adrien quirked an eyebrow, his interest in the conversation suddenly ten times stronger.

‘Your secret lover? You’ve been denying them every time I’ve asked,’ Alya said with a grin.

‘Well, okay, so maybe I have a secret lover. And I don’t think he’d appreciate it if I slept in a bed with another guy.’ Marinette glanced at Adrien. ‘No offence, Adrien.’

‘None taken,’ he murmured.

He couldn’t be 100% certain that she was really talking about Chat, but if she was, he was pretty sure her “secret lover” wouldn’t mind her sharing a bed with Adrien Agreste. Quite the opposite, actually.

But Adrien was a gentleman, and so he said, ‘Seriously, I’ll sleep on the couch. It’s no problem.’

Alya sighed. ‘Fine.’

Since the room was now filled with tension, Adrien was relieved when he realised Nino had taken the opportunity to connect his phone to the sound system and put on a playlist with house music. The fact that he’d chosen an Avicii track was a definite bonus, since that made Alya snap instantly into sing-and-dance mode, effectively removing any remaining awkwardness in the room…

… Except between Adrien and Marinette.

As Alya danced her way to the kitchen and started putting food in the fridge, and Nino took on the role as DJ, the two remaining friends glanced awkwardly at each other. Marinette’s cheeks were still red, but this time, it seemed to be out of shyness.

‘So,’ Adrien started in an attempt to break the ice, ‘this guy you’re seeing. Sounds like it’s gotten pretty serious?’

He tried to sound light-hearted, but maybe it came out a little more forced than he would have hoped.

Marinette laughed nervously. ‘Well, I don’t know… We’re still pretty, uh… casual.’

‘Casual?’ he asked, feigning innocence. She blushed a deeper red.

‘I-I don’t want to, to bore you with any details.’

_I doubt any details you gave me would be boring,_ he thought. _Actually, if I had to guess, I’d say they’d probably be way more juicy than boring._

Out loud, he said, ‘Sorry if I made you uncomfortable. I just think it’s nice, you know, if you’ve found someone who likes you back.’

The moment he said it, he realised how it would sound to her ears. He panicked as he saw her eyes widen.

‘I j-just mean that, you know, reciprocation is nice!’

He wanted to slam himself in the forehead with a brick.

‘W-what I mean to say is that—’

‘It’s okay,’ she assured him. Then she shrugged. ‘It’s actually not serious at all. I just said that so Alya would get off our backs.’

Adrien raised his eyebrows. ‘She doesn’t know?’

‘I didn’t want her pity,’ she mumbled.

That explained why Alya was still trying to hook them up with each other. _This must be really difficult for Marinette,_ he thought, but then he remembered what she’d told Chat earlier that same week.

_‘I think I’m starting to get over him. He’s an amazing person, an amazing friend, but maybe… Maybe he’s been right all along. Maybe that’s where our relationship is supposed to stay? In the friend zone? I think… I’m ready to be friends with Adrien. I love him—but as a friend.’_

He looked away, suddenly wishing he could melt into the floor.

‘I understand,’ he whispered.

‘Adrien, Mari, come help me unpack,’ Alya called from the kitchen.

Marinette seemed to be as relieved as him for the excuse.

* * *

After they got past their earlier awkwardness, Marinette found she enjoyed hanging out with Adrien. He seemed happy to be with his friends, and with a bit of alcohol added into the mix, he became more relaxed than she’d ever seen him before, a lazy grin almost constantly lighting up his features. There was something so familiar in the easy way with which he moved and talked, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what exactly it reminded her of.

One thing was certain, though: he was stupidly fucking gorgeous like that, and she was pretty sure it wasn’t just because she was a little tipsy herself. Sober Adrien Agreste was handsome and pleasant, but this Adrien was scorching _hot._

It didn’t help that his tendency to unknowingly strike various poses apparently tripled when he was intoxicated. At one time, he went to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen, and on his way there, he stretched out his muscles, reaching with his hands towards the ceiling in a way that pulled up his shirt and revealed his soft skin and lean back muscles underneath. When he returned, he paused in the door, leaning against the frame with one foot up against the wall, and then he leaned his head back and drank the water like he was in some kind of porno. Marinette had to force herself to look away.

_Friends, friends, just friends,_ she reminded herself. _It doesn’t matter that he’s eerily similar to Chat when he’s drunk—_

When she realised that _that’s_ what he reminded her off, it definitely got way harder to ignore it.

And with his sudden smoothness, she soon found that she couldn’t even remember what was so bad about laughing at his jokes or finding pleasure in his beauty or letting him wrap an arm around her when he seated himself next to her in the couch.

‘YESSS! I won again!’ Alya whooped, throwing her arms in the air.

‘That’s ‘cause you’re the best, babe,’ Nino said with a grin as she jumped into his lap and planted a victorious kiss on his cheek. ‘No one can beat you at Ultimate Mecha Strike III.’

‘That’s damn right!’

Marinette giggled as she watched the two cuddle, too occupied to notice that Adrien leaned in towards her.

‘You let her win, right?’ he murmured by her ear.

She blushed. ‘I would never.’ She glanced at Adrien’s face and saw that he was smirking. ‘Okay… maybe I did.’

‘I knew it. You’re way better at UMS than that.’ He reached for his glass of wine, inadvertently removing his arm from her shoulders as he did. His long fingers raised the glass to his lips and tipped it forward. Marinette watched his Adam’s apple bob as he drank, unable to tear her gaze away. _We’re friends,_ she thought to herself. _I just happen to think that he’s nice to look at. That’s all._

When he leaned back again, he turned to her with another smirk. ‘But not as good as I am.’

Marinette raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh? You think you can beat me, sugar? That’s cute.’

He threw his head back and laughed, then reached forward to grab Alya’s controller. ‘Show me what you got.’

‘Pfft. Okay.’

When Marinette started the new game, Alya and Nino stopped their cuddling and turned their full attention to the TV screen. Alya whispered something into Nino’s ear, at which he chuckled.

‘Ssh,’ Marinette said, readying her fingers by the controller’s buttons. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Adrien was grinning, but his eyes were as focused as hers.

_Three… two… one… and go!_

Marinette’s character was upon Adrien’s as soon as the fight began. _No holding back this time._ She started off with a devastating triple head combo, whooping as his health dropped significantly.

‘Too fast for you?’ she taunted.

‘Just thought I’d give you a head start,’ he retorted.

And somehow, miraculously, his character broke her next combo and countered with a super-ultra-claw drill that pinned her to the ground and took away a good portion of her own health bar.

‘What!’ she exclaimed.

Adrien just laughed.

The fight didn’t last long, but it was more intense than any other game Marinette had played. In the end, she managed to regain her edge, and sent Adrien’s character flying towards the horizon while glorious fireworks shot up into the sky. Marinette jumped up from the couch and started dancing a victory dance.

‘Yes! Take that, Agreste!’

He grinned as he placed his controller on the table. ‘All right, all right. I admit, you’re the best I’ve ever seen at this game.’

‘Hey!’ Alya exclaimed. ‘You let me win, didn’t you?’

Marinette immediately stopped dancing and gave her best friend a guilty look. ‘Uhh… noooo?’

Alya cocked her head to the side and raised her eyebrows, an amused smile quirking up the corners of her lips. Marinette sighed.

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s cool, girl,’ Alya laughed. She shot Nino an indecipherable look before turning back to Marinette and Adrien. ‘By the way, Marinette,’ she drawled, ‘Why don’t you go get some more wine from the cellar?’ She winked towards Adrien. ‘Bring lover boy with you.’

Marinette rolled her eyes, giving Adrien a knowing look. He smiled and got up from the couch. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Let’s go on a treasure hunt.’

* * *

Adrien opened the door to the cellar and gestured for Marinette to go first. ‘M'lady,’ he said, prompting her to blush.

‘M-maybe you should go first,’ she suggested. He smirked, leaning in closer to her.

‘Are you scared?’ he teased.

‘Pfft, no.’ She crossed her arms over her chest. ‘I just don’t trust you. If I go first, I’m sure you’ll try to scare me.’

‘I would never,’ he said with a wink. ‘But fine, I’ll go first.’

He walked past her and took the first step down the staircase, his hand searching for the light switch and finding it right on the inside of the passageway. The staircase lit up, but one of the bulbs seemed to be broken, and so the stairs plunged into darkness again at the bottom.

‘There’s probably another switch down there,’ he reasoned.

‘Why, are you scared?’

He turned back to her with a grin. ‘Nah, I know you’d protect me if something scary jumped me.’

His comment earned him another blush from the girl. ‘Are you mad that I beat you?’

‘Nope.’ He turned forward and started walking downwards. ‘I always knew you would.’

Since the steps looked old, he walked slowly to make sure none of them would break under his weight. Alya had gone to fetch wine here earlier during the evening, but she was lighter than him, and probably knew to avoid any bad steps, too.

All the steps seemed to hold though, and he reached the bottom unscathed. He even found another light switch. He pressed it and turned to face Marinette.

‘See? I told you—’

Marinette must have tripped on one of the last steps, because suddenly she tumbled forward, falling headlong towards him. He widened his eyes, opening up his arms just in time for her to fall into him, bumping against his chest and forcing him back a few steps. He wrapped his arms around him to keep her steady, and her hands grasped the fabric of his shirt, prompting his heart to jump as her fingers grazed his stomach.

Marinette raised her head and looked up at him with wide, blue eyes. She was standing flushed against his body, and so he could feel her every soft curve, every breath she took; he even thought he could feel her heartbeats in his own chest. She let out a soft little gasp as she stared up at him. He found he couldn’t tear his gaze away from her lips.

_God, her lips…_ But NO, he wouldn’t give in, he couldn’t, because he’d rejected her, and she didn’t love him anymore, and it was his own damn fault that it had come to this, so he couldn’t just go and—

She dug her teeth into her bottom lip, and Adrien had no chance in hell.

He leaned down and covered her mouth with his, feeling her lips part in surprise. She gasped into his mouth, but she didn’t push him away. Her hands still clasping his shirt, she ran her tongue against his bottom lip. Adrien groaned. It had been so long, way too long, and he had missed her mouth _so, so much_.

Pushing her up against the nearest wall, he deepened the kiss, letting his tongue slip in between her lips to meet hers. Her hands left his sides and moved up, letting her arms wrap around his neck instead, and he took the opportunity to move his own hands up beneath her shirt. Their kisses grew hotter, and more desperate, and wilder, and it seemed they would just continue to intensify indefinitely if left to their own devices.

In the dusk of the old basement, the moment seemed almost surreal. Marinette was so soft and so warm against him, and her kisses wanted so much, almost as much as he wanted her. He couldn’t contain himself; he hoisted her up into his arms and wrapped her legs around his torso, and then he started to move further into the basement, bumping into walls and stumbling over tools and old toys in his search for someplace secluded enough to tear her clothes off. And good _god_ , was she making it difficult for him to not just undress her right then and there. Her hands roamed his body like starving snakes, so desperate to touch him that she didn’t even seem to notice how her nails were scraping his skin.

Fate had mercy on him, because the next door he kicked open with his foot was a laundry room. He half-stumbled, half-fell inside, catching himself against a washing machine onto which he let Marinette down as he started pulling her shirt over her head. They separated for a few breathy seconds but reunited as soon as the article of clothing had dropped to the floor. Marinette whimpered when their lips met again, and it was such a desperate, frustrated sound that Adrien couldn’t help but push against her, so heady by his own arousal that he wouldn’t have been able to spell his own name even if his life had depended on it.

His hand travelled up along the inside of her thigh until it reached a dead end, and there he pressed up with his palm and his fingers, earning a breathless whimper from Marinette. She leaned her head back, allowing him to kiss her neck as he started to massage her with his hand. Her tiny little moans did crazy things to his brain, and he couldn’t stop himself from sucking on the skin above her collarbones, revelling in the sweet taste of her.

‘Ah—Adrien!’ she gasped, digging her fingernails into the back of his neck. And the name she used should have rung a warning bell, it really should, but she _had_ called him that before, and so he didn’t realise, didn’t even think about the implications.

Not until she moved her hands down between them and started struggling with the top button on his jeans.

Then, Adrien froze.

He stopped kissing her, stopped touching her, stopped stopped stopped, jerking back so violently that he crashed right into a cupboard in the other end of the room, sending several boxes of detergent crashing down over him. He winced, but could barely feel anything. His heart had stopped in his chest.

‘Adrien?’ Marinette breathed by the washing machine. He forced himself to look at her, but immediately regretted his decision.

_Fuck._

_F u c k._

_FUCK!_

She was Marinette, and he was Adrien, and he wasn’t wearing a mask, and she wasn’t wearing a blindfold, and there she was, sitting half-naked on top of a washing machine, her cheeks rosy and her lips swollen from their kisses, and she wasn’t looking at Chat Noir but at _ADRIEN AGRESTE._

‘Shit,’ he gasped out loud. ‘Shit shit shit. Marinette, I—’

_How could this happen, what was I thinking?! What the hell was I thinking???_

‘—This didn’t mean anything, I didn’t mean to—’

_She was in love with me, and I rejected her, and now I’ve  k i s s e d  h e r, and oh fuck, I just ruined everything I could possibly fucking ruin!_

‘—It’s just the alcohol—’

_What if she recognised me? What if she draws the parallels between me and Chat? What if she realises that I’m Chat Noir???_

‘—I would never, _ever_ , do this if I was sober, I promise, it was just a stupid mistake—’

_What’s even worse, what if this ruins us for good? What if I lose her, all because of a moment of complete brain freeze?_

‘—so please, please, Marinette, _please_ , don’t take this the wrong way. It was a stupid mistake and it will _never_ happen again!’

He didn’t realise until after he was done speaking that he’d completely forgotten to breathe. As he gasped for air, he watched Marinette stare at him in shock, then press her lips together, and lastly, smoothen out her facial features in an almost eerie way.

She got off the washing machine, fished up her shirt from the floor and left the room with hurried steps. It wasn’t until she was several steps out in the hallway that he heard her first sob.

_Oh no._

He'd really fucked up.

_Shit._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Je ne regrette (Ad)rien~~


	16. Transformation, pt 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Adrien tries to be clever and Marinette doesn't give a shit.

_Shit, shit, shit!_

Adrien had never run so fast in his life. He stumbled out of the washing room, raced towards the stairs and took the steps three at a time, seeing Marinette’s shadow disappear in the door above him. A moment later, he heard the front door slam closed. Cursing under his breath, he grabbed hold of the doorframe as he reached the top of the stairs, swinging himself around the corner—

‘ _Oumph—_ '

—and running right into a large chest.

The Gorilla’s hands landed on Adrien’s shoulders. He pushed him back, narrow eyes studying the young man’s face. Adrien struggled to get free, but couldn’t get the thick hands off of him.

‘Let me go!’ he exclaimed, his voice breaking on the last word. ‘I need to go after her—please, I need to talk to her!’

The Gorilla shook his head decisively. Adrien stopped struggling and gave his bodyguard a pleading, desperate look.

‘ _Please._ I promise, I’ll be careful. I just have to make sure she doesn’t do anything rash. She’s—she’s not herself right now, and I…’ He sighed and leaned his head back. ‘I’m really worried.’

Something changed in the Gorilla’s face then. His eyebrows, which were always pushed down low against his eyes, slowly moved up towards his forehead, softening his scowl. He closed his eyes, let out a soft sigh and shook his head again. Then he let his hands fall back to his sides and stepped aside.

Adrien stared at him. ‘Uh—thanks,’ he said in surprise. Then he remembered what he was supposed to do. ‘Don’t follow me,’ he shouted over his shoulder as he ran out through the front door and into the darkness outside.

_Now where did she run?_

He pulled to a stop as he reached the first couple of trees, looking around for any kind of sign telling him which direction she’d taken off in. He brought up his phone and turned on the flashlight, aiming it forward.

‘Marinette?’ he shouted. ‘Marinette!’

In the silence of the woods, he thought he could hear distant sobbing, and so he took off in that direction. The path forward was clear and easy at first, but when the trees started multiplying and roots popped up on the ground in front of him, he thanked himself for thinking of the flashlight. Maybe he ran a little bit too fast; maybe he was a little too reckless; maybe he overestimated his own grace and stamina. But he was Chat Noir god damn it, and he wouldn’t let his untransformed body stop him from getting to the girl he loved.

His heart jumped in his chest. _That’s right,_ he thought to himself as he ducked beneath the sharp branches of a tree that was a little too close for comfort, _I love her. I love Marinette. Love, love, love. And that’s why I can’t let her hurt any longer._

He’d been so stupid not realise it sooner. That stupid second rule that Marinette had forced him to accept… It had felt wrong even then, as if some hidden part of him already knew that he had feelings for her. And yet he had agreed on the rule, perhaps thinking that he could burn that bridge when he came to it. Well… he’d come to it now, and he’d burnt the bridge all right.

_I need to tell her how I feel. I need to tell her that I love her, that it wasn’t a mistake at all, that I want her more than I ever wanted anyone else, even more than Ladybug. Maybe then she’ll forgive me? Maybe then she’ll love me again?_

But he was Chat Noir, and he’d used her for his own gain so many times, and how could he ever be with Marinette as Adrien if she didn’t know that he was also Chat?

A faint light in the distance drew his attention, putting an end to his anxious thoughts. ‘Marinette! Please, stop running!’

He tripped over a root but regained his balance before he could fall. The momentum, however, forced him straight into a net of branches that scraped him across his face. He flinched but kept running, gritting his teeth against the pain.

‘Marinette, please, let me explain!’ he shouted.

The light was getting closer and closer, and then it was just a short distance ahead of him, and that’s when he realised it had stopped moving.

He almost ran right into her.

His heels digging into the mud of the path, he reached for a nearby branch to stop himself, managing to pull to a halt right behind Marinette’s back.

‘Marinette,’ he panted, leaning forward to support himself with his hands on his thighs. She was frozen, her arms hanging limply by her sides, her gaze aimed into the darkness at something he couldn’t see. ‘Marinette, I… I didn’t mean… didn’t mean any of the things I said before.’

No response. Slowly, he walked closer, giving the back of her head a desperate look.

‘I’ve been so stupid,’ he said. ‘I know that. But please, let me explain. Please look at me.’

‘Adrien,’ she breathed, so quietly that he could barely discern it. ‘Shut. Up.’

He blinked in confusion.

That’s when he heard the growl.

Widening his eyes, he raised his phone so the flashlight lit the forest in front of them. The beam barely illuminated the three large, black wolves that were staring at them just a few metres away, their bared fangs reflecting the light.

Without hesitation, Adrien moved in front of Marinette, shielding her with his body and fixing his gaze on the largest of the wolves. He heard her exhale a trembling breath behind him.

‘Don’t worry,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll fix this.’

_But how???_ a voice screamed in his head. _How will you fix this???_

_Growl back,_ another voice suggested. _Show your teeth and make yourself as large as you can. Scare the hell out of them._

That idea sounded like the kind of stupid, reckless thing Plagg would suggest. But it was the only thing he could think of.

‘Back away slowly,’ he told Marinette. The sound of soft, light footsteps told him that she did as he asked.

Baring his teeth and holding his arms out to make himself larger, he stared down the wolves. He even let out a low growl. The wolves hesitated for a moment, but then the leader took a step closer.

Something moved inside his shirt. ‘What are you doing???’ Plagg wheezed. ‘Transform, you idiot!’

‘I can’t,’ Adrien bit back as quietly as he could. ‘Marinette’s here.’

‘So you’d rather you both die???’

‘It’s not going to come to that.’

Backing away, Adrien used the flashlight to scout his surroundings. He caught sight of a long branch on the ground that reminded him of Chat Noir’s staff. _If I can handle it as a superhero…_

Just as slowly as the rest of his movements, he leaned down and picked up the branch, fully aware that the wolves were following it with their eyes. The weight, length and feel of it were reassuringly close to his staff, and suddenly he didn’t feel quite as helpless anymore. With a cocky grin, he twirled it a few times before taking a prepared stance with the branch in both hands.

‘You pups wanna play fetch?’

The first wolf launched at him so fast, that if he hadn’t been training his reflexes for the last three years, he wouldn’t have even noticed it moving before it was upon him. But with the help of his cat-like reflexes, he managed to bash the branch into the wolf just before it reached him, and it sent the animal flying back into the shadows. Adrien was surprised he’d been able to hit it with that much force. _Maybe Chat Noir has spilled over into my normal life more than I thought._

But mere moments after the first wolf had jumped him, the other two followed suit, and Adrien quickly realised there was no way he could counter them both at the same time. His eyes widened as he prepared for pain.

‘ _Haa!_ ’

Something gripped him and pulled him to the side so fast the air whooshed out of his lungs. With no flashlight, he was drenched in darkness, and so he couldn’t see a thing as the _something_ jerked him upwards and onto a thick tree branch. His hands grasped after his saviour, his fingers finding some kind of strong, meshy material clinging to tight muscles and soft curves—

Adrien gasped out loud. ‘ _Ladybug?!_ ’

She didn’t respond as she launched them off again towards the next branch, but now that he had a strong suspicion of his saviour’s identity, he thought he could even discern the lines of her face and hair, and _hell if that’s not god damn Ladybug._

She jumped down to the ground again, running through the woods with him in her arms, and the light of the cottage came closer and closer until the pair was fully illuminated and he could confirm without a doubt that yes, it was Ladybug who was carrying him.

His cheeks furiously red, he opened his mouth to scream, but couldn’t get a single squeak out.

With no warning whatsoever, she unceremoniously dropped him to the ground, and it was only the previously mentioned reflexes that saved him from landing on his butt. He stumbled away from her, back first, all the time staring at her like he’d never stared at anything before.

‘You… you…’

His eyes darted from her eyes— _so blue_ —to her hair— _dark pigtails_ —to her lips— _oh god_ —and his brain threatened to shut down.

Without a shit to give, Ladybug de-transformed before his very eyes, leaving a red-eyed, exhausted Marinette in her wake. She didn’t even look at him.

Adrien shook his head in disbelief. ‘No,’ he whispered in a shaky voice. ‘You’re not… This is…’

It was as if she couldn’t even see him. In complete silence, she walked past him and up to the front door of the cottage. Utterly confused and speechless, he watched her push down the handle, open the door and walk inside. Then she slammed the door closed so hard that it sent a deep tremble through Adrien’s body.

He didn’t know how long he stood there, frozen in place, his brain furiously trying to wrap itself around what the fuck had just happened. He stood there in shock, desperate for a spark of clarity that could shed light on what had just happened, but nothing came. No bolt from out of the blue (black) sky. No divine intervention, even from Plagg. No sudden realisation that made him understand _everything_. He just stood there, at a loss for words, struggling with his own chaotic thoughts.

Until a large hand gripped his shoulder from behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... well, that happened.
> 
> I hate to do this to you, but I'm going away on a trip the day after tomorrow, so I don't know when I'll be able to post the next chapter. I'll be back Nov 15th, so if worst comes to worst, you'll get a chapter sometime by the end of next week. Hopefully I'll be able to post before then, though. <3
> 
> Hope I'll see you all next time, when Adrien does his best to be the hero he was chosen to be.


	17. Destiny

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marinette is Ladybug and Ladybug is Marinette and Chat Noir is Adrien and Adrien is Chat Noir... apparently.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, I came home early, which means you get the next chapter a little earlier than planned!
> 
> Boy, did this chapter get WEIRD. I mean, I changed most of the weirdness into something a little more unweird, but damn, my mind was pulling me in so many strange directions while I was writing this. That's what I get for writing most of it during my vacation, I guess. I got way too creative in that tiny little hotel room. (AS WELL AS DAMN ANGSTY! Fair warning guys: proceed with caution. :P)
> 
> And oh my god, the ending of this chapter... the ending was getting so weird I couldn't even read it with a straight face. (It involved a deep philosophical discussion about free will and moral responsibility, but in the end, I cut it out, because... well... it didn't really fit with the theme. :D)
> 
> Hope you'll enjoy the (slightly more polished) result!

‘Oh my god, Mari! What happened to you?!’

Marinette stood frozen in place in the hallway, staring into empty space as her brain tried to reboot. She couldn’t remember how she’d arrived there. She couldn’t remember what had happened after she’d entered the cottage. The last thing she remembered—and something she remembered very clearly—was the look on Adrien’s face as she de-transformed in front of him.

Eyes wide, shrunken pupils, lips parted in unspoken surprise…

Almost like Alya was looking right now.

‘Mari! Talk to me! Where is Adrien? What happened to the two of you?’

On the inside, Marinette wanted to scoff, but her body wouldn’t obey. _What happened to the two of us? More like, what didn’t happen to the two of us?_

‘ _Marinette!_ ’ Alya gripped her shoulders and shook her carefully, just to get some sort of response. Marinette just blinked, slowly, as if all she could do was move in slow motion. ‘Marinette, you’re worrying me!’

Everything turned strangely quiet then. She looked at Alya’s face, and she could see her lips move as she talked, but she could only hear muffled sounds.

‘What?’ Marinette mumbled.

Alya’s worried face tipped to the side, or maybe that was Marinette herself, and then there was nothing.

* * *

‘Still no answer.’

‘What? Let me try!’

‘You think he’ll answer when you call, but not when I do?’

‘He must just not have heard it… God damn it Agreste, you answer the phone right fucking now!’

Marinette’s eyes flickered open. Her cheek pressed against a soft material, maybe a pillow, and the world was still lying down. She frowned. In front of her, Alya and Nino were lying side by side; Alya held a phone against her ear and ran a hand through her thick curls, while Nino held his head in his hands as if he was afraid that it would fall off. Marinette blinked slowly. No, they weren’t lying down, were they…? She wasn’t standing up… She was in a couch, weightless, so then the world must be turned right side up after all? But the mere thought exercise made her brain hurt. She groaned and closed her eyes again.

‘Marinette!’ Alya exclaimed, and then she was at her side, crouching down beside the couch. She pressed a palm against Marinette’s forehead, holding it there for a moment before stroking her bangs out of her eyes. ‘Marinette, I can’t reach Adrien. Do you have any idea why?’

 _Adrien…_ A jolt of pain went through her head. Faint, flickering memories flashed through her mind. A blond boy’s wide blue eyes in a washing room. The trembling beam of a phone’s flashlight. A surprised gasp as she grabbed hold of a waist and launched herself upwards.

‘It’s… in the snow,’ she whispered.

There was a brief pause.

‘The snow?’ Alya asked carefully. ‘What do you mean?’

Marinette swallowed. ‘He dropped it in the snow, in the woods,’ she continued faintly.

Alya drew in a sharp breath. ‘In the woods? And he hasn’t returned?!’

Marinette opened her eyes just in time to see Alya’s head turn in Nino’s direction. The boy widened his eyes.

‘I’ll go look for him,’ he said, already turning on his heel.

‘No!’ Marinette forced out, grimacing at the pain it brought her. ‘Wolves… There are wolves.’

‘ _What?!_ You mean that Adrien is out there all alone, with bloodthirsty wolves?!’

 _I left him right outside the door,_ Marinette thought in confusion. _Why hasn’t he returned…?_

‘Maybe the Gorilla knows what to do,’ Alya said in a voice full of fear, getting up from the floor. ‘I’ll go get him.’

When Alya went away, Marinette exhaled a breath she hadn’t been aware of holding. She closed her eyes and shut the world out. Her mind was all muddled, all confused with lies and wrongs and mistakes and disappointments and painful truths.

_Adrien is Chat. Chat is Adrien._

She’d had her very first suspicions in the cellar, when Adrien had kissed her and it had felt _familiar_ to her.

_The boy I confessed my love to is the same boy as the one I rejected. The boy who rejected me is the same boy as the one I brought into my bed. I loved Adrien, I used Chat, Chat loved Ladybug, Chat used me, we used each other and we tricked each other and none of us said a thing about it._

The kiss had felt familiar and safe and even though she’d sworn to get over Adrien, even though she’d realised she felt something for Chat, she’d been so confused by the familiarity that she hadn’t even realised she was kissing her old crush until he’d pushed her away in panic.

_He knew I was in love with Adrien, yet he used me. I knew he was in love with Ladybug, yet I used him._

Then he’d handled that stupid stick in the woods like he’d never done anything else in his life. He’d taunted the wolves like he didn’t have a worry in the world. He’d protected her like he always used to protect her as Chat.

And suddenly, it was obvious to her.

Adrien was Chat.

But he _couldn’t_ be, because Adrien had rejected her, and Chat had kissed her, had _slept with_ her _._ Adrien had rejected her and Chat had comforted her, all on the same day. Ladybug had kissed Chat and Marinette had confessed to Adrien and Adrien had rejected Marinette and Ladybug had rejected Chat and Chat had comforted Marinette and…

She winced. Her brain just couldn’t wrap itself around the gigantic mess she’d put herself in.

_Adrien knew. He knew the whole time and he still used me. He rejected me as Adrien but kissed me as Chat. He kissed me in the cellar, by mistake or by ignorance, and then he told me it would never happen again. He told me it was a stupid mistake; that it didn’t mean anything._

How could he? How could he do that to her?

_How could I do that to him?_

Marinette hid her face in her hands as a sob slipped out. Would she ever be able to look herself in the mirror again?

Somewhere far away, in the muddled reality that she so desperately wanted to disappear from, she heard a door close.

‘Gorilla is nowhere to be found,’ said Alya’s breathless voice. ‘And neither is the car.’

* * *

Adrien could only remember one other time that he had felt so utterly hollow.

Sitting slumped back in the back seat of the car, his head having lolled to the side and his eyes aimlessly staring out into the darkness outside the window, he knew he should feel _something_ about what had just happened… but no. Nothing. And maybe it wasn’t very strange, then, that he was transported back to another car ride from many years ago, in which he had felt that same hollowness in his chest and in his mind.

During that car ride, a worried Nathalie had sat beside him, hesitantly reaching for his hand but immediately retracting her arm when he jerked away. During that car ride, he’d also searched himself for a glimmer of emotion, but he had been just as empty as the coffin that had been lowered into the ground that same day. He’d wished he could feel something, but he just couldn’t. It was like that part of his brain had closed off as a protective measure.

It was the same thing all over again, except this time, his mind was nowhere near as clear as it had been that day. His thoughts were so chaotic he couldn’t even understand them; there was _Ladybug_ here and _Marinette_ there but even though he now knew there was a connection between them, his brain refused to make it.

The Gorilla was quiet as usual. Adrien hadn’t resisted the large hands when they’d steered him towards the car. Like a rag doll, he’d allowed his bodyguard to sit him down in the back seat, staring into empty space as a seat belt locked into place and a door closed to his left.

Adrien had no idea how much time had passed since then, but his mind still hadn’t recovered from the shock of seeing—

_Ladybug looking right through me. Ladybug clenching her fists by her sides. Red sparks circling around Ladybug’s body, removing her characteristic spots and replacing them with…_

‘No,’ he heard himself say.

No, it couldn’t be, because if that was the case, then—

‘Nonono,’ he groaned, gritting his teeth as his fingernails dug into the leather seat below him, ‘No. No. _No._ ’

—if that was the case, then he’d—he’d—

‘Stop the car,’ he called out, already feeling the bile rise in his throat. The Gorilla must have heard the urgency in his voice, because the car screeched to a halt. Adrien removed his belt and threw himself out beside the road, into the snow, his stomach convulsing in waves as vomit forced itself out of his mouth and darkened the white ground.

He heard another car door open behind him, but the Gorilla left him alone, warily eyeing his trembling body by the side of the road.

 _No,_ Adrien thought bitterly, _I’m not going to run._

Even though he desperately wished he could have run from the sudden pang of emotions that had slammed into him without even a moment’s notice.

He vomited again, and then he realised he was crying, and now Gorilla was coming up behind him, pulling him upwards with his large hands below Adrien’s armpits. The big man said nothing as he carried the sobbing boy back to the car, but instead of returning him to the back seat, he went around to the other side and put him down in the passenger seat, locking him safely into place with the belt before returning to his own seat behind the wheel.

Adrien didn’t even care that the Gorilla was there, right beside him. He kept crying, but the desperate sobs had turned into something more solemn now, and as the tears streamed quietly down his cheeks, a new thought squeezed his lungs.

_What if Gorilla… What if he saw…?_

Slowly, Adrien’s head turned towards his bodyguard. The man had his gaze set straight ahead, stonefaced as always, but Adrien knew better. Adrien knew he’d been at the scene way too fast to not have seen anything.

Momentarily forgetting his own anxiety, Adrien felt his pockets for his phone, but found nothing. He cursed under his breath. _I must have lost it in the woods._

But even if he hadn’t, what would he have done? Texted Marinette? _“So I know I’ve fucked up and probably traumatised you for good and that I’m a no-good idiot who realised way too late what I felt for you and that it’s too late to go back now, but my bodyguard might have seen you de-transform, and idk do you think we could pretend that everything’s okay for a moment so we can kill him and save your super secret identity from leaking out any further?”_

Adrien groaned and leaned his head back. He couldn’t rely on La— _Marinette_ —this time. Not for this. After all he’d done to her, after all the hurt he’d brought her, the least he could do was to make sure her momentary loss of caution wouldn’t bring her any _more_ harm.

Turning slowly to the Gorilla, Adrien pushed away his dread for the moment and put on a forced smile.

‘So… did you have a calm and quiet night?’ he asked.

His bodyguard just glanced at him, saying nothing.

‘Even bodyguards must need a vacation from time to time, right?’

No response.

‘Were you on your way to the bathroom, or something…? When you, um… found me.’

This time, the Gorilla shook his head. Adrien perked up, grateful for the miniscule gesture.

‘On your way to do something else, then?’

Another shake.

Adrien swallowed. ‘Did you… did you hear wolves?’

The Gorilla glanced at him again. Then, after turning his gaze back to the road, he nodded.

Adrien’s heart sank. _Merde, he did see something, didn’t he?_

‘So you came out as soon as you heard that, and then you found me there? Alone?’

There was a long moment of silence as the Gorilla pursed his lips in what Adrien supposed was deep thought. The tension was getting unbearable, and after having waited for what felt like at least five minutes, Adrien prepared to make his next move. He had only just opened his mouth when the Gorilla beat him to it.

‘I saw,’ he grumbled, voice low and hoarse. ‘The girl.’

Adrien didn’t know what to say. On one hand, his bodyguard had apparently seen Marinette or Ladybug or both at the same time, but on the other hand, the man had just spoken to Adrien _for the first time in four years_.

‘Y-yeah?’ was the only thing he could get out, his eyes wide in shock.

‘I won’t tell,’ the man continued. Adrien waited to see if he would say anything else, but when it became clear that he wasn’t planning to, Adrien exhaled and leaned back in his seat.

‘Thank you,’ he said softly. The Gorilla just nodded.

Why the man would promise not to tell anyone was beyond Adrien’s comprehension, but he wasn’t about to question it. Instead, his thoughts circled around the fact that he’d just _talked_. It was a coincidence that was almost too perfect to be true that the last time Adrien had heard his bodyguard’s voice had been just a few weeks before the car ride after the funeral. How strange to think that that very voice had been a common occurrence back then. The Gorilla had stopped talking a short while after Adrien’s mother disappeared and never returned to his former self in the weeks or months or years after. Now that Adrien had heard his voice again, it served as a horrible reminder of what had once been. As if he wasn’t already filled to the brim with negative emotions after what had happened with Marinette.

_Marinette…_

Adrien shook his head in an attempt to clear his head of the guilt that loomed over him. The guilt, and the confusion, and the hurt that all mingled into one horrifying feeling that could best be likened to standing on the edge of a cliff and pending between thinking that he deserved to die for all the hurt he’d caused on one hand and that he didn’t deserve to die because it wasn’t a horrible enough fate on the other hand.

No, he wasn’t in any way suicidal, but he wished he could have just… turned himself off for a while. A few decades or so. Maybe then, when he came back, he could start a new life that caused less hurt to him and the people around him.

When the car finally stopped outside of the Agreste mansion, Adrien had regained his sense enough that he didn’t need the Gorilla to help him out of the vehicle. He dragged himself out, across the front yard and up the stairs to the door, which opened before he could reach it. For a short moment, Adrien’s brain tricked him into thinking that his father was standing there, worriedly studying his son… but it was Nathalie, as usual, and she was alone.

‘Adrien!’ she exclaimed, widening her eyes when she saw his face. ‘Where did you get all those scratch marks?’

Frowning, he brought a hand up to his cheek and felt the skin sting in pain. ‘Branches,’ he murmured.

‘Branches?’ Nathalie stared at him for a moment. Then she shook her head and walked up to him with quick steps to wrap an arm around his shoulders and lead him inside. ‘Your father isn’t going to like this.’

 _I couldn’t care less about what father thinks,_ Adrien thought bitterly.

‘I need a new phone,’ he said.

Nathalie sighed deeply. ‘Right. Your friends called me.’

Adrien froze. ‘They… did?’

‘Indeed. They told me they couldn’t reach you, and were wondering if I knew where you were. Do you want to call them from my phone and tell them that you’re fine?’

He looked away. _Call them… and face the onslaught of questions they’ll have for me? And face Alya’s rage after having heard the truth from Marinette? And face Nino’s disappointment in me for fucking up so badly?_

‘No,’ he murmured, ‘that’s all right. You can call them.’

Nathalie nodded. She brought out her own phone and started fiddling with it. ‘I’ll block your device and get you a new sim card with the same number, but it will take until Monday at least.’

Adrien nodded, already on his way up the stairs to his room. As he opened the door, he heard Nathalie’s voice speaking to someone on the phone. Not wanting to hear a single word of _that_ conversation, he hurried inside the bedroom and closed the door behind him. There he stood, in the darkness, backed pressed against the wood, heart thundering in his head. And eventually, he slid down to the floor and hid his face in his hands.

That’s when Plagg apparently decided it was time to get out of his shirt.

‘Wow, you’re a mess,’ the kwami said with a chuckle.

‘Thanks, Captain Obvious,’ Adrien muttered behind his hands. ‘Don’t you have something better to do?’

'Better than taunting you? As if!'

Adrien pulled his knees up towards him, crawling into a ball on the floor. Tears were burning behind his eyes, but his mind was still muddled. He didn't know what to feel. He didn't know what to think. He was all alone and empty, and couldn't even talk to Plagg about it.

He let out an involuntary sob. Why couldn't he just turn back time, make tonight never happen?

‘Listen, kid,' said a soft voice in front of him— _Plagg?_ 'This isn’t anything new.’

Adrien sniffled, peering at the kwami through his fingers. 'Hmm?'

‘I’ve seen this a thousand times. All Ladybugs and all Chat Noirs have screwed up along the way. I mean, not that _your_ screw-up isn’t particularly amusing, but they’ve all done it one way or the other.’ Plagg chuckled as he gazed up towards the ceiling in remembrance. ‘I once had a human that was _this close_ to assassinating the civilian Ladybug by mistake. And another one, oh boy, he slept with Ladybug’s sister after she tricked him into thinking she was the girl behind the mask. _That_ was a screw-up. You’re nowhere near that.’

Adrien's hands slipped off his face, and he found himself gaping at the little black creature in front of him. ‘They _what?_ ’

‘But you know what?’ Plagg continued, untouched by Adrien’s shock. ‘Even despite all of that, they got through it, and they always ended up together. It’s almost like some ancient magic was bringing them together…’ He winked.

‘… You mean that what I feel for her isn’t real?’ Adrien whispered, feeling his heart sink again.

‘Oh. My. _God._ ’ Plagg rolled his eyes in an exaggerated way. ‘That’s not the moral of this story, idiot. The moral of the story is that the two of you can get through it, okay?’

‘But,’ Adrien said, refusing to let the subject go, ‘what about the part about ancient magic…?’

The kwami sighed. ‘Okay, so you’re destined for each other. That doesn’t mean your feelings aren’t real. If your feelings aren’t real, then no one’s feelings are real, because we’re all stuck acting in a way that was predetermined by our previous actions and experiences. You know, studies have shown that our subconsciousness decides on a set path as much as _seven seconds_ before we become aware of having made a decision…’ He paused. ‘I could stand around all day discussing the philosophy of free will, but I doubt you’d enjoy it, so why don’t we leave it there?’

And with that, Plagg zipped through the air and off to the cheese fridge. Adrien was left staring after him. _The philosophy of free will, huh? That was… unexpected._ Then again, there was so much he didn’t know about the ancient kwami. Maybe he should trust Plagg. Maybe things could work out, even though he’d fucked up.

But for things to work out… He needed to sort out his feelings before he could face Marinette again, because there was no damn way in hell that he would make the same mistake thrice.

Wiping his tears away with the back of his hand, Adrien got up from the floor and stumbled towards his desk, opening the bottom drawer to bring out his dark blue notebook. After his mother had disappeared, his therapist had recommended him to keep a journal and write down whatever he thought or felt about the incident. He'd been skeptical at first, but after having tried it a few times, he'd marvelled over how well it had worked for him. When he wrote down his thoughts, they always became that much clearer and more tolerable.

He'd eventually stopped writing when he didn't feel the need anymore, but now... Now, he felt like he really needed to dump his thoughts onto blank paper and sort them out before uploading them into his brain again. Maybe the pencil could do what his mind apparently couldn't do.

So Adrien sat down in his bed, propped up against his pillows, and started writing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... Okay, I couldn't help but include a tiiiny bit of philosophy. And I do think Plagg is secretly super into that stuff. I mean, he's a cheese gourmet. Doesn't that just scream philosophy nerd to you guys?
> 
> On another note, I'm dying to know what you think of this chapter. Did it get too weird? Did it disappoint you? Was it all you could ever hope for? I just have no idea what happened with this one, but I'd like to know your thoughts. :]
> 
> Join me next time, for more angst but also some steps taken in the right direction!


	18. Doubts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You thought things would get easier from here on out? Well are you in for a treat...
> 
> More identity struggles, more mistakes, more angst.
> 
> Relief is coming eventually... I hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. This week has been stressful at work but I've been oddly motivated in my spare time, meaning that I've been too tired to write but just sharp enough to watch hours of educational YT videos and play Pokémon Let's Go... Ahem. 
> 
> Anyway, here's a chapter I hope you'll enjoy!

‘You want some snacks, Mari?’

Marinette glanced at the bag of chips in Alya’s hand. Sighing softly, she shook her head and leaned her head back against the window, feeling the engine of the bus whir in her bones.

‘No thanks,’ she murmured. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Alya’s eyebrows wrinkle together in a worried frown, but she turned away without another word.

Neither Alya nor Nino knew all the details of what had really happened last night. Even in Marinette’s confused state, she’d understood more than well that she had to keep Chat Noir’s identity a secret, and that included leaving out the fact that Adrien Agreste had launched a wolf several metres away from him with a single branch.

Since she didn’t feel ready to talk about how Adrien had kissed her and then rejected her _again_ , she’d also left that part out of her story. And so the official story was that Marinette and Adrien had had an argument, that they had run into the woods, and that they’d seen wolves but managed to hide until the large animals left the area. No kisses. No stupidly daring Adrien. No secret identities being spilled.

That Alya had her doubts about the whole thing had been obvious, but coupled with the fact that Adrien’s visit to the cottage had been cut short and Marinette was now a zombie, she’d apparently decided that it would be for the best to return home early.

So that’s why they were now going by bus back to Paris, the morning after the big catastrophe that Marinette didn’t know if she would be able to bounce back from.

She was exhausted. She was hollow. She was heartbroken. And most of all, she was terrified of having to see Adrien again in school. So terrified that she had seriously considered moving to her grandma in Italy and start a new life there. But then she’d remembered the small fact that she was Ladybug, the only one who could protect Paris against Hawkmoth by purifying his Akumas, and she’d had to admit that it made it difficult to just up and leave the very city she had a duty to protect.

That, and Alya, and her other friends, and her parents, and the fact that she barely knew any Italian…

… Yeah, it tipped the scale.

Maybe she could change to another school? She’d had to look up how that would work.

 _Or you could just suck it up and confront him,_ a tiny voice suggested in her head. She closed her eyes in an attempt to make it go away, but she was unsuccessful. _You_ are _the protectors of Paris, after all. You can’t let conflicts in your civilian lives get in the way of that._

And while she knew that part of her was right, Marinette wanted nothing more in that moment to just take her ear studs off and return them to Master Fu. She opened her eyes and glanced guiltily at her bag, where Tikki was hiding. She knew her kwami would be extremely disappointed in her if she knew what her human was thinking at that very moment.

Her shoulders heavy with guilt, she pulled her jacket more tightly around her and tried to make herself as small as possible in her seat. She longed for nothing more than to dig deep under the covers of her bed and forget the world for at least a few months.

* * *

When Monday came, she had yet to come up with a solid plan for avoiding to see Adrien. She considered pretending to be ill, but when her mother entered the room to check on her, she hadn’t been able to lie to her. Marinette had always been terrible at lying—though she’d gotten a little better at it since becoming Ladybug—and when faced with her mother’s kind eyes, she’d simply given in and forced herself to get out of bed and ready herself for school.

She wasn’t sure what she had expected from her first encounter with Adrien after the weekend, but it sure as hell wasn’t that he would stare at her the moment she walked into the classroom. His body was facing forward, but his deep green eyes were aimed at her and his trimmed eyebrows had shot up towards his hairline and his lips were parted in silent surprise, and the intensity of the attention he gave her made Marinette’s heart skip a beat.

She felt herself shrink as she scurried past him and up to her own seat. She could understand it if he was shocked; if he had a hard time accepting who she was; if his feelings for Ladybug and his casual relationship with Marinette struggled to make peace with each other; but did he really have to _stare like that?_

From her place behind him, she could see that his ears were reddening. Was he nervous? Embarrassed? Angry?

Alya slipped in beside her and gave her a careful pat on the back, leaning in with a worried frown on her face. ‘Hey, Mari,’ she murmured so only Marinette would hear. ‘Are you okay?’ She glanced in Adrien’s direction, a flare of anger sparking in her eyes.

‘I’m fine,’ Marinette replied weakly, looking away from the blond boy— _Chat, Adrien, my partner, my lover—_ in an attempt to calm herself.

‘You just tell me if you need something,’ Alya ordered. ‘Whether it’s a chocolate bar or an emergency escape. I’ve got your back.’

Marinette placed her hand over her friend’s and gave her a warm smile. ‘Thanks, Al.’

To her relief, Adrien didn’t turn around or make even the smallest attempt at making contact with her during the entire school day. Even at lunch, he gave Nino some excuse about having to meet with a study group that allowed him to slip away and most likely eat somewhere by himself. Marinette was grateful. She didn’t want to talk to him, didn’t want to have to explain herself, didn’t want to face the consequences of her rash behaviour.

Tikki, however, was of another opinion.

‘You two _need_ to talk,’ the kwami whispered from her bag as the final class drew to an end. ‘What if someone is akumatised? Will Ladybug and Chat Noir be able to work together?’

‘We’re superheros, Tikki,’ Marinette reassured her while walking out of the classroom, even though a lump was building in her stomach. ‘We wouldn’t let this get in the way of our duties.’

Tikki looked like she was about to say something else, but Marinette hastily closed the bag at the sound of someone clearing their throat behind her. She spun around and found herself face to face with Adrien, who looked like he was in serious danger of vomiting if he opened his mouth. Marinette slowly backed away.

‘H-hey, I need to go, I’m uh—’

‘Can we just talk for a minute?’ he softly pleaded with her.

She looked past him, seeing the group of people thin out behind his back. Alya threw her a worried glance which Marinette responded to with a reassuring nod. _I can handle this._ Her friend nodded back and went down the stair together with the rest of their class, eventually leaving Marinette and Adrien alone.

‘Okay,’ she replied then, clenching her hands into fists by her sides as she faced Adrien. He glanced down at them before looking up at her face.

‘I won’t hold you up for long,’ he said quietly. ‘I just… wanted to apologise for what happened this weekend.’

Marinette carefully kept her face in check, willing herself not to frown. ‘Okay.’

Adrien ran a (nervous?) hand through his hair and glanced away a second time, this time at his feet. ‘It was…’ He took a deep breath and looked up again, scowling as if he was angry at himself for finding it so difficult to look at her. Now, his green eyes fixed themselves to her face. ‘I was a dick, and I have no excuses for my behaviour. I’m not even going to try to justify it, because I know I can’t. I’m sorry for doing that to you. I don’t want you to hurt, and I really regret my actions. I hope you can believe me when I say…’ She saw his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallowed. ‘… that regardless of what’s going on between us, I would never tell anyone about…’ He took a quick look around, then lowered his voice. ‘… your secret.’

Marinette waited for him to continue, to tell him on his own volition that he was Chat Noir, but he just looked at her in silence. At first, anger bubbled up inside of her— _he’s not even going to admit it?_ —but then, doubt took its place. She peered at his face, trying to see Chat in his features, but it was so hard without the cocky grin and the messy hair.

Her scrutiny made him visibly uncomfortable. He started to fiddle with the strap of his messenger bag. ‘Well, that’s all I wanted to say, I guess…’

‘You guess?’ she asked, her voice coming out harsher than she expected it to. Adrien tensed, his cheeks reddening.

‘I-I’m really sorry,’ he squeaked. ‘Marinette, I don’t expect you to forgive me, but I at least want you to understand that I am so ashamed for what I did. I’m sorry…’

He slowly started backing away, bowing his head in shame, and Marinette was seized by a sudden panic. If he was really Chat, wouldn’t he have been angry with her for having used him as much as he had used her? Wouldn’t he have at least said _something_ about it?

_What if he isn’t Chat after all? What if I got it all wrong? Does that mean… Oh my god, did I reveal my identity to someone else than my partner?!_

It didn’t matter that it was Adrien—she’d been reckless and stupid and broken the trust of both Tikki and Master Fu.

A sharp pain stabbed her in the heart. _I don’t deserve my Miraculous._

‘Adrien,’ she exclaimed breathlessly as he started to turn away, making him stop in his tracks. ‘I need you to tell me—’

‘ _Akuma!_ ’

Both Marinette and Adrien froze at the sound of the shout from below, which was followed by a loud crash, then several more shouts. Even in her adrenaline rush, Marinette noticed that Adrien’s gaze was drawn to her bag as Tikki peeked out. Marinette pushed down her instinct to hide the kwami from view, instead swallowing as the little creature flew out into open air.

‘Marinette! We need to transform!’

Marinette turned to look at Adrien, who was staring openly at Tikki. When he realised she was watching him, he jumped and turned his gaze away. ‘I’ll get out of your way,’ he said, turning on his heel and running away. She noticed that he wasn’t running towards the danger, but rather away from it, further strengthening her doubts about his identity. As he disappeared into an empty classroom and slammed the door closed, she turned back to Tikki with determined eyes.

‘Tikki,’ she began, already running towards the stairs. ‘Spots on!’

* * *

Adrien leaned back against the closed door, staring into empty space in front of him, barely noticing that Plagg flew out of his jacket.

‘Hey, kid,’ the kwami said. ‘You think maybe we should go help the bug?’

Adrien swallowed. ‘I can’t.’

‘What the hell do you mean you can’t? You’re god damn Chat Noir, it’s your _duty_ to go!’

The boy’s eyes focused on the little black kwami floating in the air in front of him. He couldn’t face Ladybug. Not after everything. ‘I… I just…’ He shook his head. ‘I can’t.’

‘What did we talk about?’ Plagg reprimanded him, placing his little paws in his sides. ‘Your screw-up is _nothing._ The two of you will fix the mess you’ve put yourself in, but even if you wouldn’t, don’t you think your duty as a superhero is a tiny bit more important than your pride?’

Adrien froze as he heard more shouts from outside the classroom.

‘And what about Ladybug?’ Plagg continued. ‘What about your partner? You gonna leave her hanging? What sort of superhero are you if you let her fight that Akuma on her own?’

Adrien closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. The kwami was right; Marinette might need his help.

_Has she ever really needed me, though?_

He pushed his black thoughts away and forced his eyes open again. _There’ll be time enough to hate myself later._ ‘Plagg, claws out!’

Feeling the transformation envelop him, he pulled open the door and ran as fast as he could towards the stairs, reaching behind his back to pull out his staff and launch himself to the ground floor in one flowing movement.

He landed behind Ladybug just as she successfully blocked a strike from what seemed to be a dark-clad ninja with nunchucks. Adrien quickly analysed the situation. _A ninja boy. Theatre geek? Fast on his feet and with his hands. Aiming for her weak points._

He vaulted upwards with his staff, spun in the air and landed behind the boy. As he did, his gaze met Ladybug’s. Her eyes widened, but she quickly regained her focus in time to block another hit, and then another, so Adrien returned his attention to the Akumatised boy.

_Another pair of nunchucks on his belt. Why hasn’t he reached for it yet?_

Well, Adrien wouldn’t give him a chance to. Extending his staff, he made to strike the nunchucks off the belt, but the Akuma surprised him by instantly spinning around, grabbing the staff and jerking the far end upwards, sending Adrien flying through the air with a surprised yell. He lost his grip on the staff and cursed in his mind as the stone hard wall closed in on his face.

Then a sturdy string wrapped around his waist and he was jerked backwards. All too used to Ladybug’s yo-yo and the manoeuvres she used to pull with it, he used the new momentum to right himself in the air and dive for the Akuma. The string unwrapped itself from his torso just as he changed direction, allowing him to make a controlled landing and snag the staff away from the ninja’s hands. Ladybug appeared behind the boy, using her yo-yo to pull the nunchucks on his belt to her. With a smirk, she spun the weapon in her hand once before throwing it to Adrien, who easily caught it in the air. As he glanced down at his catch, he realised it wasn’t a pair of nunchucks, but a wrapped-up skipping rope with black plastic handles.

‘Chat! Destroy it!’ Ladybug shouted as she dodged a desperate attack.

Adrien raised his right hand. ‘Cataclysm!’

As he let the destructive power envelop the skipping rope, the Akumatised boy fell to his knees. Adrien blew the last dust away from his fingers, watching the dark butterfly flutter through the air in the short moment before Ladybug’s yo-yo caught it.

‘Miraculous Ladybug!’ she exclaimed as she threw the yo-yo up in the air. Adrien closed his eyes as the familiar warmth of her powers brushed past him, returning the school and everything in it back to how it had been just a few minutes ago.

It had been an unusually quick battle. Strange how they could be so synced, even though Adrien felt like a worthless piece of junk inside.

But maybe his sense of duty trumped his sense of self-worth.

_Or maybe my love for her did._

He shook his head in an attempt to rid his brain of that thought. He couldn’t allow himself to go there right now.

After Ladybug had taken a minute to comfort the Akuma victim, she straightened and walked up to Adrien— _Chat_ , he reminded himself—with uncertainty colouring her facial features. She stopped a few metres away from him, and he expected her to say something, but she was almost eerily silent as she gazed at him with an unreadable expression.

His ring beeped twice.

‘Well done,’ he said, pushing down his instinct to fist bump with her. It didn’t seem like the right time for that.

 _Why not, though?_ he asked himself. _I know she’s Marinette, but she doesn’t know I know, and she also doesn’t know that I’m Adrien, so why would anything have to be weird between us?_

Except for the small fact that the last time they’d seen each other, she had told him their kiss had been a mistake... along with certain other things that he didn't want to recall.

But she couldn’t be allowed to know who he was; it was dangerous enough that he knew _her_ identity.

‘You too,’ she said, her voice sounding strangely empty. ‘We were… synced.’

‘Yeah,’ he said, nodding slowly. He felt so uncomfortable in his own skin. Where was he supposed to look? What was he supposed to do with his hands?

His ring beeped three times.

‘I should go,’ he said, starting to turn—but being hindered by slender fingers that wrapped around his wrist. He froze.

‘Wait,’ Ladybug whispered.

Adrien stared at her hand, then up at her face. _Is she going to...?  
_

Her beautiful blue eyes looked up at him almost pleadingly. ‘I want to know who you are.’

His mouth fell open. She _what?_

‘Ladybug, you know we can’t reveal our identities,’ he reminded her with a searching gaze studying her face. _And now, of all times? Now, after all that’s happened?_

She gave him a sad smile and shook her head. ‘I know,’ she said, letting her hand slide off and drop to her side. His wrist felt cold without her warmth. ‘But I still want to.’

Something in the tone of her voice—so soft, so easy—made a new feeling spark to life inside him. He backed away a few steps.

‘You’re not even going to apologise, are you?’ he asked quietly.

* * *

Marinette felt her heart stop in her chest. She widened her eyes and swallowed. ‘What… what do you mean?’

_Is he referring to the kiss at the Eiffel Tower, or does he mean the fact that I took advantage of his feelings for Ladybug as Marinette, or is there a third alternative here that I can’t even see?_

If he _was_ Adrien, then it wouldn’t make sense for him to apologise to her the way he’d done, asking nothing in return as his civilian self, just to ask her for an apology back as Chat. So did that mean that she’d been wrong, after all?

She watched Chat’s face twist into a frown, the corners of his lips turning downwards in a way she hadn’t seen on him before.

‘What I mean?’ he asked, voice suddenly sharp. ‘What I _mean_ , Ladybug?’

‘I… I just want to make sure,’ she whispered, looking on in horror as his expression turned even more sour. _I need to make sure you’re not who I fear you are._

‘Yeah?’ He slowly walked back towards her, eyes dark. His ring beeped four times, but he didn’t even blink. ‘Do you even remember what you said to me?’

Her feet seemed to back away on their own. ‘Wh-what I said?’

He closed his eyes hard, as if in pain. When he opened them again, she could see the hurt clearly. ‘It was a mistake,’ he murmured. ‘We’re not friends. I don’t know you. I don’t know anything about you.’ He inhaled sharply. ‘That’s what you told me. Angrily.’

Relief overtook her even as dread pooled in her stomach. _He means the one kiss, then. He’s not Adrien, then. He can’t be._

‘I’m sorry,’ she breathed, now taking a step towards him instead. ‘I really am. It was… It was a horrible thing to say to you, _Chaton_.’

He winced. ‘Don’t call me that. I… can’t. Not right now.’ Shaking his head, he backed away as his ring beeped five times. ‘I need to go.’

And just like that, he used his staff to vault himself up and away, disappearing behind the edge of the school’s roof, and Marinette found herself standing alone in the large courtyard, trying her best not to fall apart.

 _I was so scared he was Adrien that I hurt him even more. He is my best friend, and I didn’t trust him. And now, he doesn’t trust_ me.

How she wished that she could have been struck on the back of her head with one of those nunchucks in that moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'll try to get the next chapter out soon-ish, but it might be another week or so, considering my current mental state and the fact that I have an even more intense job week to look forward to. Just giving you a heads up.
> 
> Still hope you'll join me next time!


	19. Revelation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finally, some god damn FLUFF.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last time, on Ladroitte Tortures Her Poor Readers:
> 
> \- Chips  
> \- One-sided apologies  
> \- Ninjas  
> \- Angst
> 
> This time, on Ladroitte Waves the White Flag of Peace:  
> \- Sleepy teens  
> \- Cheeky kwamis  
> \- Tangled limbs
> 
> Posting this right before crashing in bed... G'NIGHT

The heavy doors slammed closed behind the heavy-hearted boy just as a pair of shiny black pumps came to a stop in front of him. Adrien slowly raised his gaze, watching as Nathalie’s frown melted into worry.

‘Adrien,’ she said, her voice soft.

Even despite his weariness, he forced a smile. ‘Good afternoon, Nathalie.’

‘Are you—’ She paused. Cocked her head to the side. Bit her lip. Then she seemed to decide against asking whatever she had been about to ask, and instead, she handed him a phone. ‘This has your old number. You will have to reinstall all of your old apps, but your contacts should be intact.’

Adrien received the device and tucked it into his back pocket. ‘Thank you.’ He eyed the staircase. ‘I don’t have any work tonight, do I?’

‘No,’ she replied, holding her tablet device close to her chest. ‘You have to let your wounds heal.’

‘They’re just scratch marks,’ he murmured, avoiding her gaze. But he was grateful he wouldn’t have to model tonight; he didn’t think he would have been able to pretend to be all right. ‘I’m really tired. Is it okay if I take a nap?’

‘Of course, Adrien. Rest for as long as you need. I’ll inform your father.’

‘Thank you.’

He dragged his feet up the stairs, barely able to keep his eyes open, and somehow made it into his bedroom and over to the bed. He vaguely heard a door close; Plagg must have taken care of that part.

‘Hey, kid,’ the kwami called from somewhere far away, but Adrien was already half-asleep, sprawled out on top of the made bed. ‘I think we should talk.’

‘Mhm,’ Adrien sighed, and then he was lost to the darkness.

* * *

When he next opened his eyes, the sun had set and plunged him into complete shadow, accurately reflecting how he felt inside. He silently cursed himself for not having set an alarm before crashing; he always felt weird after sleeping for too long after school.

Forcing himself to sit up, he grabbed for his phone—still in the back pocket—and peered at the screen. 20:14. Had he really slept for three and a half hours? That explained his bursting headache.

As he held the phone in his hand, it buzzed, and the screen lit up, effectively blinding him. Letting out a pained _augh!_ , he threw the phone without thinking, expecting a crash as it smashed to pieces but instead hearing only a dull thud.

‘You’re lucky my previous human was a baseball pro,’ Plagg grumbled before dropping the device on the bed. ‘So, who’s the message from?’

Adrien rubbed his eyes, feeling his stomach churn. He had a pretty good idea who could have messaged him. It _might_ technically be Nino, but the more likely perpetrator was…

He glanced at the screen.

And immediately sagged into a sad lump.

… Princess.

**> r u busy tonight? There’s smth I wanna talk to u abt  <**

Sliding back down onto his back, Adrien let out a sustained “fuuuuuck”.

_Mari is Ladybug and Ladybug hurt me and I’m angry with Ladybug for not even having the courage to apologise to me but Ladybug is also Mari and I hurt Mari and Mari doesn’t know her classmate is also her superhero partner who happens to have been really intimate with her and she doesn’t know that her partner knows that she is Ladybug and I love Mari but Mari is Ladybug and Ladybug hurt me and…_

‘Plagg,’ he groaned, ‘please kill me.’

‘I believe the correct phrase is “claws out”.’

The boy gave his kwami a deadpan look. ‘You can’t be serious?’

The little creature, now sitting crosslegged (how the hell did he even manage that with his tiny legs?) on the bed, gave a nonchalant shrug. ‘Can’t stop destiny.’

_Again with this “destiny” excuse… As if something as flimsy as that would ever make Marinette forgive me._

‘I’m going crazy, Plagg,’ Adrien muttered, running both hands through his hair. ‘I don’t even know who’s who and what’s what anymore.’

‘Oh please. You’re Adrien and Chat Noir. She’s Marinette and Ladybug. Can it be any simpler?’

‘It’s _not_ that easy,’ Adrien argued. ‘I hurt Mari as Adrien, but cherished her as Chat. So which of these am I responsible for? And how the hell am I supposed to handle pretending to be only one of them when I’m actually both?’

Plagg gave an exaggerated yawn. ‘Easy. You don’t.’

‘… Are you suggesting I tell her who I am?’

‘Wouldn’t that solve your identity crisis?’

Adrien thought for a moment as he stared up into the shadows. ‘But she would hate Chat as much as she does Adrien…’

‘Or maybe she would love Adrien as much as she does Chat?’

Adrien sat up with a jolt, almost kicking Plagg off the bed. He stared at the cat kwami. ‘You think she _loves_ me?’

Plagg gave him a stern look. ‘Kid. Focus.’

Taking a deep breath, Adrien closed his eyes and tried to clear his mind. Even if Mari loved Chat, it didn’t mean she still wanted Adrien, and it definitely didn’t instantly solve all their problems.

‘You can’t just ignore her message, y’know,’ Plagg continued.

Bringing the phone up to his face, Adrien read Marinette’s message a second time. _Something she wants to talk to me about…_ What would that be? He had to admit, he was curious, but…

‘What if she’s planning to break up with me?’ he whispered.

‘At least that means there was something between you to break up in the first place.’

Adrien resisted an impulse to chuck the phone at his kwami again. Instead, he groaned and rolled his eyes. ‘Very helpful.’

‘How could she break up with you when you’re not even dating? Or am I somehow misunderstanding this weird mating ritual you humans have going on?’

‘You _know_ what I mean,’ Adrien complained. ‘We may not be _dating_ but we’ve been… y’know…’

‘Rubbing your nasty bits together?’

This time, Adrien _did_ throw the phone. Plagg easily caught it between his two paws, smirking.

‘You never were much of a pitcher.’

‘You’re disgusting, you know that?’

‘Mm-hm,’ Plagg said, throwing the phone back into Adrien’s lap. ‘It doesn’t matter how many times you throw that thing at me. The message will still be there when you get it back.’

Adrien bit his lip as he glanced down at the black screen. He didn’t want her to break up with him, but… He _did_ want to see her. He wanted to talk to her; wanted to sort this giant mess out once and for all. Maybe they _could_ bounce back? Maybe everything wasn’t fucked?

‘Tell her you’ll be there in ten minutes,’ Plagg called, already floating away. ‘I just have to get myself a cheese wheel first.’

* * *

**> sry, fell asleep. Be there in 10 mins.  <**

Marinette stared at the message, her hands cramping around her phone. ‘Tikki,’ she breathed. ‘He said yes.’

‘That’s great, Marinette!’ the red kwami squeaked, waving her little arms in the air. ‘You were so worried he wouldn’t show, but I told you you could trust him!’

‘If he knew who I was, he wouldn’t be as willing,’ Marinette muttered.

Tikki gave her human a sad look. ‘He’ll understand. I’m sure of it.’

‘How can you know?’

‘It’s destiny. I’ve told you this before, Marinette: Ladybug and Chat Noir are destined to find each other.’

‘Well, we _have_ found each other, but that doesn’t mean we can’t lose each other again, does it?’

The kwami seemed to hesitate. ‘It has never failed before.’

‘So you mean I could do all kinds of bad things to him and he would still love me? He would still want to be with me in the end?’

‘Maybe not,’ Tikki said, ‘but if you did horrible things to him, it wouldn’t really be you, would it? You wouldn’t have received your Miraculous to begin with, because you wouldn’t have been a good person.’

Marinette scoffed, but she could feel her lungs constrict in anxiety. ‘Am I, though? Even though I’ve already hurt him this much?’

Tikki floated in the air in silence for a moment. If the kwami hadn’t been afraid to interfere too much, she might have told Marinette the true identity of Ladybug’s trusted partner. She might have told Marinette that Chat Noir was at just as much fault as Ladybug. But as it was, she decided on, ‘I firmly believe that the two of you can get through this. You are a good person, Marinette; a _great_ person. I love being your kwami, and I know for a fact that Chat Noir loves being your partner.’

With a deep sigh, Marinette fell back into her bed, staring up at the skylight door. She knew she had to do this. She had to make this right. Chat didn’t deserve to be kept in the darkness; she never should have used him like she had. Maybe he would never be able to forgive her, but she wouldn’t be able to live with knowing that she had tricked her beloved partner without him even knowing.

She stared up at the door in silence until a hesitant knock jerked her back to reality. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Tikki zip away below the loft. Digging her fingernails out of her mattress, Marinette sat up and cleared her throat.

‘C-come in?’

The skylight door opened up just a bit, as if Chat wanted to give her a chance to change her mind, but when she didn’t immediately scream out, he opened it the rest of the way and slid inside the room, landing in a crouch on her bed. He got up and moved to stand on the floor, looking unusually uncomfortable.

‘Hi,’ Marinette whispered, pulling her knees up towards her chin.

Chat moistened his lips, looking anywhere but at her. ‘Hello.’

She frowned. ‘Are you… okay?’

A deep sigh followed by a hand running through those blond locks, and then he actually looked her in the eyes. ‘Sorry. Just a little absent-minded, is all.’ He seemed to hesitate for a moment. Then he carefully, slowly, sat down on the edge of her bed. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

Marinette bit her lip. ‘I…’

How was she supposed to tell him? Should she just spit it out to get it over with? Should she wrap it into a bundle of feathery words to soften the blow? No matter how she pictured herself saying it, she couldn’t imagine that it would end well.

Best just to get it over with, then.

She took a deep breath. ‘Chat, I…’

It was like she was standing with her feet right on the edge of a cliff; if she took another step, she would walk off the face of the earth and fall to her death.

Chat’s eyes were nervous; wide and uncertain. _I need to say it. I need to get it out._

‘… I broke a rule.’

… _Well, that’s one way of saying it._

Slowly, his eyes narrowed, first to regular size, then even further. ‘A… rule?’

‘Actually, make that two,’ Marinette corrected with a sigh.

She could practically see the cogs and gears turn in his head. Then, his eyes widened again at the same time as his body tensed visibly. ‘You know who I am?’

‘Not that rule,’ she murmured, glancing away.

There was another moment of silence. ‘… Oh.’

Feeling a sudden burst of courage, she turned her gaze back to him, staring into his bright green eyes. One of her hands flew forward to grab at the sheets close to his right thigh. ‘Chat, I’m not who you think I am. I mean… I _am_ Marinette, but I’m also…’ She swallowed. Why was it so impossible to say it? ‘I’m… I’m Ladybug.’

Chat’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, she hurriedly kept going. ‘And I know I’ve hurt you, _Minou_. God, I’ve been such an idiot. I’m really, really sorry for what I’ve done. I… It’s true that I was in love with Adrien Agreste, and I used you so I could pretend I was with him, and that was horrible of me, knowing that you loved Ladybug. But then I spent more time with you, and… I realised…’ She took a deep breath, not daring to look up at her partner. ‘I realised I love you back, Chat.’

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him squirm on the edge of her bed. ‘Marinette—’

‘And I was a jerk earlier today, too. After the fight. I… I know it doesn’t excuse my behaviour, but I was so scared. I thought… For a while, I thought Adrien was you.’

She finally looked up at him, and it was just in time to see him freeze.

‘B-but now I know you’re not him!’ she exclaimed, digging her fingertips into the sheets, desperate to get him to forgive her. ‘I know that. I was just paranoid and thought that you were the same person.’ She hesitated. ‘Which… if it were true… might have been a relief, in a way.’

He shook his head. ‘Marinette.’

‘I get it if you’re confused,’ she murmured, biting down on her bottom lip. ‘It’s just… if he had been you, I might at least have understood some of his actions…’ She shook her shoulders in an attempt to rid herself of the thought. ‘But that’s not important. What’s important here is you. I don’t know if there’s anything I can do to make you forgive me, _Chaton_ , but I wanted you to know, at least…’ Taking a trembling breath, Marinette looked into his eyes, which seemed greener than even. ‘I love you.’

Despite herself, she reached for his hand. Her heart almost shattered when he jerked it away. His gaze left hers, focusing instead on a spot on the floor.

‘Thank you,’ he said, wringing his hands in his lap. ‘For apologising. I… almost thought you wouldn’t.’

Marinette could only stare at him. _He didn’t think I would apologise?_

Chat sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I forgive you. I know what you were thinking up there on the Eiffel Tower, and it… happens to the best of us.’

She gave him a confused look. ‘You know what I was thinking…?’

He paused. Then, he turned his gaze back to her; large, green pools of sadness. ‘Marinette, I already knew that you were Ladybug.’

Marinette frowned as she tried to wrap her head around what he was saying. ‘You knew I was Ladybug, but you still let me use you?’

‘… I’ve only known for a few days.’

‘A few days? But—’

‘Marinette,’ he said, grabbing her hands and holding them between his own. His eyebrows furrowed as his eyes somehow grew even sadder. ‘I’m sorry.’ He inhaled deeply and closed his eyes. ‘Claws in.’

Widening her eyes, Marinette withdrew her hands to grasp for a pillow that she could throw in his face, but the transformation went too fast, and she ended up finding herself with her hands paused in mid-air, her gaze fixed to the beautiful face of none other than Adrien Agreste. Her hands fell into her lap together with her jaw.

Adrien glanced away and drew a self-conscious hand through his hair. ‘I couldn’t go on lying to you. It’s been eating me up.’

_He… He *is* Adrien? So I was right? But then…_ Marinette felt lightheaded. Supporting herself with one hand against the nearest wall, she raised the other hand to rub her temple. _Then I…_

‘That night, after what happened in the cellar,’ Adrien said quietly, ‘I realised I’d fucked up. I ran after you, intending to tell you that I loved you. But then the wolves came, and you saved me, and I found out that you were Ladybug, and…’ He paused. To Marinette’s surprise, he exhaled in amusement, one corner of his mouth pulling into a sad smirk. ‘I knew you wouldn’t believe me after that.’

Adrien turned to her again as his smirk faded. ‘I won’t hold you to your love confession. The circumstances have obviously changed, and I understand if you want nothing to do with me, now that you know who I am.’

Marinette shook her head. She didn’t know how to react. Should she be angry? Happy? Sad? Relieved? Confused? Her trusted partner and her crush were the same person, and he was sitting on her bed in front of her, nervously fiddling with her bed cover while he waited for her response. He was Adrien, and he was Chat, and he’d hurt her, but he’d also given her _so much_.

Her thoughts were drawn to their recent “date”. He’d made her laugh so hard her stomach had ached, and he’d shown a new side of himself. Even though he had been the one to hurt her in the first place, he’d come to her side to cheer her up and try to make her feel better. He’d let her fall asleep on him, and then he’d trusted her enough to de-transform and go out with her, the only things keeping his identity safe being a pair of sunglasses and a baseball cap.

… And then he’d pushed her up against a wall in Alya’s cousin’s cellar, only to change his mind and tell her that he would _never_ do something like that to her again.

He’d acted like a jerk in doing so, but she could see it a little more clearly now. The alcohol and their banter must have made him forget that he wasn’t who he usually was when he hung out with her, and when he’d remembered, he must have panicked and exclaimed the first excuses that came to mind, just to protect his identity.

Hadn’t she done the very same thing, just a week earlier? Hadn’t she kissed Chat as Ladybug, forgetting that she wasn’t Marinette, and then shut him out when she realised she’d made a huge mistake? They both knew how important it was that they kept their identities from each other. And still, she’d broken that rule when she’d de-transformed right in front of Adrien, too upset to think of the consequences.

_God, I’m such an idiot._ They were both idiots. They were naïve, hormonal idiots who didn’t think their stupidity would come back to bite their asses. Well, they were wrong. And hadn’t they already been punished enough for it?

‘Maybe I should leave you alone,’ Adrien murmured in a trembling voice, ‘so you can think this through. I don’t want to rush you—’

‘Don’t leave,’ she whispered, reaching for his hand. ‘Please.’

He blinked at her before turning his attention to her hand, staring at the place where her fingertips brushed against his pinky finger. ‘N-no, of course not, not if you don’t want me to.’

He tentatively moved his hand closer to hers, parting his lips when she intertwined their fingers.

Marinette bit her lip. ‘I trust you… Adrien.’

His hand squeezed hers. ‘And I trust you, Marinette. Just as much as I trust Ladybug.’

She exhaled a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. Maybe they could be okay again.

Hesitantly, she moved closer on the bed, feeling her heart jump in her chest when he did the same. Without a word, and fully in sync, they leaned into one another, Adrien wrapping his arms around her shoulders as she wrapped her own around his torso. With her ear pressed against his chest, she could feel his heart galloping inside, but despite its pace, it calmed her.

She wasn’t sure how long they sat like that before either of them moved, but after a while, Adrien leaned down and buried his nose in her hair. ‘I l-love you, Mari.’

The little stammer made her heart fill with warmth. ‘I love you, kitty.’ She squeezed him tightly before pulling away, earning a disappointed mewl from her partner. But when she followed up with a yawn, his brow furrowed.

‘I should go,’ he said softly, absent-mindedly playing with his Miraculous ring— _how have I never noticed that before???_ ‘It’s getting late, and you need your beauty sleep.’

She cocked an eyebrow. ‘Are you saying I’m ugly?’

Adrien chuckled and bopped her on the nose with his index finger. ‘I’m saying you look tired.’ Then he gave her an earnest smile. ‘Besides, you know I think you’re the most beautiful person in the world.’

She tried to hide her blush by stroking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. ‘You don’t h-have to leave, you know… You could… stay the, stay the night, if you want?’

Watching his eyebrows shoot up, she immediately back-pedalled. ‘You’re right! Too soon. Sorry…’

But Adrien’s surprise quickly turned into a soft, smiling expression. ‘Are you sure you can handle sleeping in the same room as the top model you’ve been crushing on for the past three years?’

She grabbed a pillow and shoved it in his face. ‘You can sleep on the balcony if you’re gonna be like that.’

The pillow fell into his lap as his smile grew into a grin that made him look a lot like his alterego. Marinette’s heart jumped at the sight. ‘You know you want me to keep you warm and cozy in bed, Bugaboo.’

‘I do,’ she whispered, and at the sudden seriousness in her voice, Adrien’s grin melted off, exchanged for a shocked blush.

‘That’s—I, I mean—’

‘You’re real cute when you’re flustered,’ Marinette teased as she got up from the bed and started climbing down her stepladder. ‘I’m just gonna change and brush my teeth. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t.’

She glimpsed his dumbfounded nod before dropping to the floor below, biting back a smile. Yes. They _would_ be okay again.

When she returned a few minutes later, Adrien had removed his pants and hoodie and tucked himself in her bed, lying on his side with his cheek resting in his palm. He held the blanket open as she went up to the bed in her PJs.

‘All warmed up,’ he said.

Marinette smiled softly, crawling in beside him. Thank god he’d decided to wear a t-shirt at least, or she didn’t know if she would’ve been able to handle being so close. She sighed as she wiggled into a comfortable position, making sure to keep a respectable distance from the boy she loved. ‘God, that’s nice,’ she whispered before reaching out of the warmth to turn off the bedside lamp.

‘Sweet dreams, Marinette,’ he whispered back.

She found his hand under the blanket and squeezed it for a moment before pulling back again. ‘Sweet dreams, kitty-cat.’

* * *

Just half an hour later, unbeknownst to the soundly sleeping teens, they were cuddled close enough to breathe the same air, and entangled enough to muddle the definition of where one of them started and the other one ended.

A black kwami chuckled quietly in the shadows. ‘Your human is a dork.’

‘And yours is a nerd,’ a red one added sleepily beside him, ‘just like you.’

Plagg gasped in feigned indignation, but his godly counterpart was already snoring softly. He sighed and cuddled close to her. ‘You’re lucky us nerds like ladybugs.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not much more to go, my friends! 
> 
> What do you want to see in the next chapter? (It might be the final one - I haven't decided yet.) Hit me with your best shots!


	20. The End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A fluffy ending to an angsty story...
> 
> Oh, and we finally get some Ladynoir AND Ladrien.
> 
> (ALSO THIS CHAPTER IS MORE THAN DOUBLE THE LENGTH OF MY USUAL ONES. I got inspired and couldn't stop writing, lol.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for your suggestions for this chapter! I got a lot of great ideas, and I think I managed to incorporate most of them, so I hope you'll like it!
> 
> Writing this fic has been a lot of fun - difficult at times, but so, so rewarding! I'm amazed that so many people read, liked and commented on my chapters. It's crazy to think that, on average, almost 700 people have read every chapter. I did some basic math and came to the conclusion that, if the average person reads 200 words per minute, my fic has been read for a total of FIVE MONTHS spread out over ~650 people. That's incredible! O.O
> 
> So thank you so much for reading, and for cheering me on, and for appreciating this thing that I started writing just to get out of my writer's block. I now have inspiration for the original project that I paused in the past few months, which is why I'm going to return to working on that for a while. 
> 
> I'll return here eventually with new stories (already have some great ideas for new intrigues between our favourite dorks), but until then, you can reach me on Tumblr if you want to talk to me (https://nerdnag.tumblr.com/). I'm not super active, but I'd love to interact with you guys on there - so if you do decide to follow me, don't be afraid to send me a message! :)
> 
> And now that that's been taken care of, I present to you:
> 
> The (Fluffy) End.

Marinette awoke with a face full of hair.

It took a moment for her to realise that it wasn’t _her own_ hair.

Frowning in the dim light, she pulled back in an attempt to get a grip on her reality. The movement woke the second human in her bed— _oh right_ —who let out a soft sigh as he turned to face her.

And that’s how Marinette found herself lying in her bed, half-naked, face to face with her long-time crush—the absolutely gorgeous teen model Adrien Agreste.

Said model yawned and stretched out his limbs, which made Marinette acutely aware of how close they were and how their legs were _tangled together_ beneath the blankets. Adrien also seemed to realise it, because his eyes flew open just as his body froze in the stretched-out position.

Marinette’s heart was already galloping. _It’s not like I haven’t been close to him before, for Chrissake! I’ve done horribly naughty things with this boy, and now I’m getting all riled up just because of some skin-to-skin contact?_ She tried to remind herself that it was just Chat Noir, her silly partner, but strangely, that only made it all worse.

Hm. That had never happened before.

She half expected him to launch himself out of bed and escape through the skylight door, but instead, his muscles relaxed as he sank back beside her. His gaze softened, and one of his hands reached up to cup her cheek.

‘I really like your face,’ he said.

And just like that, Marinette’s panic was blown away. She tried to bite down a laugh, but it turned into uncontrollable giggles instead.

Adrien gave her an indignated look. ‘What?’

Through her giggling, Marinette managed to get out, ‘I, I really—really like your, your face too!’

‘Why did you remove all those posters of it, then?’ he asked, gesturing grandly to her walls. ‘Seems a little counterproductive.’

‘Shut up,’ she said, digging her face into his neck. His arms casually wrapped themselves around her and pulled her closer, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

Feeling his Adam’s apple move as he swallowed, Marinette’s heart started going crazy again.

She knew they had just made up and that things were new and sensitive, but he was so close and he smelled so nice— _like warm, sleepy skin on a beautiful boy—_ and he was holding her close anyway… so she dared to press her lips against his neck.

Adrien stopped breathing, but his hands pressed against her back, trying to push her even closer. So she followed up with another peck, and then, slowly, she parted her lips and exhaled against his skin. He rewarded her with a gasp and with moving one of his hands down to grab her hip.

Wanting to find out whether he tasted as good as he smelled, Marinette ran a feather-light tongue against his jawbone, and felt a heat coil between her legs when she realised that, yes, indeed he did. In response, Adrien leaned his head back, opening up his entire neck to her. She made full use of it by bringing one hand up to the baby hair on the back of his neck while slowly kissing her way down from his jaw, across his throat and to his collarbones, which she grazed with her teeth before sucking on his skin with her lips.

Adrien moaned and pushed his hips into hers, and Marinette almost whimpered when she felt how hard he was already. The atmosphere in the room changed drastically. Suddenly Adrien’s lips were on hers and her hands dug in beneath the front of his t-shirt and one of his legs pushed in between hers and everything was hot and breathless and fast.

That’s when Marinette’s alarm rang.

She turned it off without even looking, then decisively returned to the soft lips of Adrien Chat Agreste Noir. He pulled her up so that she was straddling him and once again pushed his hips into hers, and oh god she wanted to remove both of their underwears and sink down onto him, and he seemed to have the same idea, because his fingers hooked around the edges of her panties and tugged downwards. She lifted her butt just as the alarm rang a second time. Annoyed, she reached out and turned it off again.

‘We’re going to be late,’ Adrien breathed as Marinette leaned forward to plant a string of kisses along his jaw.

She took his right hand from her hip and brought it up beside his head on the pillow, flicking his grey ring with her index finger. ‘No, we won’t.’

Apparently satisfied with that answer, Adrien used his left hand to help her tug her panties down to her thigh, then let his slender fingers caress their way upwards, earning a gasp from Marinette when he grazed her wetness.

‘Marinette! You have to get up, or you’re going to be late for school!

Marinette threw herself off the bed at the sound of the third voice from below, stumbling as she pulled her panties back up. ‘Yes, mum! On my way!’

Adrien sat up in bed, his cheeks refreshingly pink and his crotch sporting a _very_ mesmerising tent. ‘Raincheck?’ he asked in a breathless voice.

Marinette reluctantly tore her gaze away from him. Even after the compromising position they’d just been in, and even among the pink linens of a teenage girl’s unmade bed, the boy casually managed to strike a pose that would make even the most experienced photographer drool… or maybe that was actually _thanks to_ the compromising position and unmade bed.

‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Raincheck.’

* * *

He couldn’t get enough of her. She was like a drug, and come to think of it, she always had been, but now it was like that drug had just recently been legalised, and he couldn’t help but indulge in it whenever he had the chance.

But it didn’t feel fair to Marinette to do it in public—especially not in school—so he kept a respectable distance when they weren’t alone, even though it physically pained him to leave her side. And they hadn’t exactly gotten much time alone since Tuesday morning, either. With his scratch marks now fully healed, his father seemed determined to fill Adrien’s every second away from school with work. Sure, there had been a couple of visits to Marinette after dark, but he’d only had enough energy to get there, and had then promptly collapsed in her bed as soon as he’d entered her bedroom.

Now a week later, both teens were getting frustrated. Adrien noticed it in how Marinette sent longing glances his way during class and in how she casually bumped into him just to get some physical contact, but most of all, he knew how she felt because of her texts.

**> Don’t look, but someone behind u is staring at u like crazy  <**

Adrien smiled softly at the text that just popped up on his screen. He resisted the urge to look over his shoulder at the row behind him.

**_> Omg, is it ladybug???  <_ **

**> Don’t be ridiculous. Ladybug’s ballsy enough to stare at u from the front.  <**

**_> Tru, but she’s also stealthy af  <_ **

**_> Also I’m like 99.999999% sure ladybug doesn’t go to my school, so  <_ **

**> Exactly  <**

**> God damn it  <**

**_> ?  <_ **

**> Ur neck looks so kissable  <**

Adrien’s heart jumped in his chest. He subconsciously started rubbing his neck as he thought about what to reply. In the end, he decided to go for,

**_> Kiss it then  <_ **

**> Here? Now?  <**

**_> Or after class  <_ **

Her answer came over a minute later.

**> How?  <**

Adrien was about to reply when the bell rang. Still without looking over his shoulder, he started packing up his things and stood up to leave. As he walked from his seat, something touched his arm.

‘Hey, Adrien!’

He turned in surprise to face a happily smiling Marinette. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Alya pause and frown at them. _Act natural act natural act nATURAL._ ‘Uh… hey, Mari. What’s up?’

‘I’m going to the library to pick up a book for our English class. Do you have one already?’

‘No,’ he said slowly, before her intentions hit him. ‘I could… maybe come with you?’

She nodded, still with that happy smile on her lips. _God, I want to kiss those lips._ ‘That’s a great idea! Can we go right away?’

‘Sure!’

Ignoring Alya’s laser eyes, he followed Marinette out of the classroom and down the hall. They walked in silence all the way to the library, and even then, neither of them said anything until Marinette had found them an isolated corner in the back. There, she turned to him with a tired sigh.

‘Finally alone.’

‘The library?’ he asked, arching a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Really?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘Oh, come on. Did you think I was going to tear off your clothes or something? I just want to talk.’

 Adrien was stumped. ‘… Talk?’

Immediately, the fear hit him. _She doesn’t want this anymore. She’s tired of having to pretend. She’s tired of being with someone like me. I’m not what she expected, and now she’s going to break up with me._

‘I don’t want to do this anymore,’ she said, leaning against the nearest bookcase. ‘It’s so exhausting.’

He stared at her. _She… she really is breaking up with me._ He knew he should say something, but his brain didn’t function at all, and so he couldn’t string words together in any way that would make sense.

When he didn’t answer, Marinette continued, ‘I want to show the whole world that we’re dating. I don’t want to hide it anymore.’ She looked at him with determination in her eyes. ‘I love you, Adrien. And I know you have an image to uphold, and that your dad would be furious, but… do we have to keep it a complete secret like this?’

Adrien’s heart thumped in his ears. She… she didn’t want to break up? She loved him? She wanted them to go public?

‘Thank god, I thought…’ He shook his head, ran a hand through his hair and took a deep breah. ‘Never mind. Mari, I don’t give a fuck what my father thinks, and the same can be said for my so-called “image”. I just kept quiet about us dating because I thought it was what _you_ wanted.’

Marinette raised her eyebrows. ‘Are you kidding me? Why wouldn’t I want people to know about us?’

He thought for a moment, realised that he couldn’t come up with a viable reason, and shrugged. ‘I guess I… just didn’t want to embarrass you.’

That made her eyebrows lower themselves again. She walked up to him and enveloped him in a tight hug. ‘There’s no way I would ever be embarrassed by you, kitty,’ she assured him. ‘I’m proud to be your partner.’ She pulled back a bit and smiled up at him. ‘In and out of costume.’

He felt his cheeks burn. ‘Sooo… does that mean…?’

‘Come on.’

Before he knew it, she was pulling him with her back out of the library and into full view of anyone out in the yard. Adrien expected thousands of eyes to turn towards them; he expected the entire world to go silent in awe of the fact that _he_ was _holding hands_ with _the most amazing girl on the planet._ He expected thunderworks and confetti and a parade.

In the very least, he expected people to _notice._

But no one seemed to even realise that they were in fact holding hands.

He glanced at Marinette. Judging by how tense she was, and how she seemed to be holding her breath, he wagered a guess she was thinking the same thing as him.

‘… Maybe we worried unnecessarily?’ he suggested with a shrug.

But just as Marinette turned to answer him, they were interrupted by a shrill voice.

‘Adrikiiins!’

Adrien quickly side-stepped as Chloé Bourgeois threw herself at him, stumbling forward when she only found thin air. To stop her from falling on her face, he reached out with an arm and caught her in the last second. She grabbed on to him, widening her eyes. ‘Oh, thank god you caught me!’ Her gaze zipped over to Marinette, and immediately, her lips quirked downwards. ‘She jerked you to the side. She wanted to hurt me!’

Carefully pushing her away so that she was standing an armlength’s distance away, Adrien shook his head. ‘No, Chloé, she didn’t. That’s crazy. Marinette wouldn’t hurt a fly.’ _… Although maybe a moth._

Chloé looked back at Adrien. As if Marinette wasn’t standing there, she leaned closer and asked, ‘Why are you hanging out with _her,_ Adrien? She’s such a parasite. She just likes you because you’re a famous model.’

Marinette clearly heard the comment, because he could see her clench her hands by her sides. Adrien frowned and stepped back from Chloé. ‘I’m hanging out with Marinette because I love her.’

There was a loud squee nearby, but it didn’t come from any of the two girls in front of him. It came from behind him.

Before Chloé could react to what he’d just said, a whirlwind of red and brown blew past him and swiped Marinette away. Adrien blinked as he watched Alya confront her best friend in a corner ahead, her eyes gleaming and her arms flailing wildly. Poor Marinette was blushing so hard she looked more like a Christmas light than a girl, but he couldn’t discern what either of them were saying.

‘What. Did. You. Just. Say?’

Adrien reluctantly turned back to his childhood friend. When he saw the shocked look on her face, he sighed. ‘Listen, Chloé… I know you always wanted there to be something between us, but you know I don’t feel the same way. I’ll be your friend, but I won’t be any more than that.’ He gazed towards Marinette, feeling how his lips quirked into a smile. ‘Marinette is… She’s just the right girl for me. She’s kind, funny, intelligent, beautiful and so, so brave. She loves video games and sewing her own clothes and baking and helping people, and... well… she’s just amazing.’ He turned back to look at Chloé, whose _shock_ had been exchanged for gloom. In a knee-jerk reaction, Adrien reached out and laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry. But I really think you could grow to like Marinette too, if you tried. Maybe… for my sake?’

He wanted to add, _“If we really are friends?”_ but caught himself.

Chloé took a deep breath before turning away to hide her face, bringing her hands up to rub at her eyes. Adrien’s hand slipped off her shoulder. He wanted to comfort her, but he knew there was nothing else he could say. He’d said it all, and if she still didn’t understand…

‘I… I need to take this call,’ Chloé sniffed, waving her phone in the air before hurrying away and disappearing around the nearest corner. Adrien sighed and leaned back against the wall while rubbing his temples. Maybe their friendship was a lost cause, but… He couldn’t help but feel guilty about it.

‘Adrien Lover Boy Mister Perfect Dorkable Nerd Agreste!’

Hearing his name—well, _part_ of his name—Adrien froze and turned just in time to see Alya stomping up to him, her eyes burning. He widened his eyes and stumbled back, wondering what the hell Marinette had told her.

‘Y-yes?’

Just one metre away, Alya’s face transformed. Her mouth and eyes widened in glee as her arms darted out and pulled him to her, pushing the air out of his lungs when she squeezed him in a tight embrace. Over her shoulder, Adrien saw Marinette blink in surprise. When she saw his face, she raised a hand to her lips to hide a smile.

‘My boy!’ Alya bellowed happily, patting him on the back. ‘You’ve finally come to your senses!’

Adrien felt his face heat up. ‘Um—’

‘Welcome to the family, LB!’

He almost choked at the nickname, before remembering that she used to call him Lover Boy. _Oh, the irony._

‘Alya!’ Marinette squeaked. ‘Let him go! We’ve talked about this!’

_You have?_ he thought, but he was nonetheless relieved when Alya released her vice grip. Drawing for air, he supported himself with one hand against the wall while Alya backed away grinning.

‘I knew the “secret lover” was you!’ she said. ‘What I don’t get is why you kept it a secret? It’s not like Nino and I wouldn’t have cheered you on.’

Adrien and Marinette exchanged a look. ‘It’s… complicated,’ Marinette said.

Alya didn’t miss a beat. ‘Complicated, huh? Still so secretive.’

‘It’s for your own safety,’ Adrien said in a serious voice, trying to stifle a smile when he saw Marinette grin behind Alya’s back. Well, it _would_ be safer for everyone if they could keep the identity reveals to a minimum.

‘Sure, lover boy,’ Alya said with an eye roll. ‘Whatever keeps you asleep at night.’ She backed towards the stair while wiggling her eyebrows. ‘So, are you going to class, or… celebrating your public status in private, so to speak?’

‘Alya!’

‘What? It’s what I would’ve done.’ She smacked her own forehead. ‘Oh, I mean, it’s what I _did_ do.’

Marinette groaned. ‘Oh my god…’

Adrien sidled up beside her and grabbed her hand in an attempt to erase her mental picture. She looked up at him, a slow smile warming her lips.

‘We can celebrate later,’ she mouthed when Alya had left them to their own devices.

He grinned and squeezed her hand. ‘As you wish, m’lady.’

* * *

The last bell of the day rang, and Adrien packed up his things and walked behind Marinette out of the classroom. Alya winked before dragging Nino away (in the wrong direction, Adrien noted), leaving the newly official couple to themselves.

Marinette pulled him to her as the rest of the class poured down the stairs, the sounds of their chatter and laughter fading more and more until everything was silent except for Adrien’s own heartbeats and the sound of Marinette’s nervous breathing below him. She balled the front of his t-shirt in her fists.

‘I was almost hoping for an Akuma,’ she said in a low voice, her gaze fixed to her own hands.

He raised his eyebrows. ‘Hm?’

She looked up at him then, her blue eyes deep and full of mischief. ‘We still haven’t… you know… made it _official_ as our alteregos.’

Adrien stared at her. ‘What? You mean…’ He shook his head. ‘What?’

Marinette giggled, biting her lip in the way that always made his heart do crazy things in his chest. ‘I want a romantic kiss on the rooftops, you dork.’

‘… Oh.’ A grin stretched his lips wide. ‘I like how you think.’ He leaned down to peck her on the forehead.

‘E-excuse me?’

The teens froze at the hesitant voice behind Adrien’s back. It sounded like… but surely, it wasn’t…?

Adrien pulled himself from Marinette and turned around, finding himself standing face to face with Chloé again. But there was something different with her this time: her gaze was lowered, her hands were hidden beneath her back and one of her feet was nervously kicking at the floor.

‘Chloé,’ Adrien said, mostly because he didn’t know what else to say. ‘Is… everything okay?’

She raised her gaze, showing him emotions he hadn’t seen on her face in a long, long time. But after just a few seconds, she moved her gaze somewhere behind him instead. ‘Hi, Marinette.’

Adrien peered over his shoulder at his stumped girlfriend.

‘Uh… hi, Chloé?’

Chloé stroked a loose sling of hair behind her ear before looking away again. ‘Can I talk to Adrien for a sec?’

Marinette blinked. ‘S-sure! I’ll, uh—wait outside?’ She shot him a nervous look.

‘Yeah. I’ll be there in just a moment,’ he said.

She nodded, already backing away. ‘Um… bye, Chloé.’

‘Bye.’

Adrien watched Marinette turn around and run down the stairs. In front of him, Chloé let out a deep sigh.

‘Sorry for interrupting you,’ she murmured.

‘It’s okay.’ He turned to her, forcing a smile. He had no idea what to expect, but at least she hadn’t insulted Marinette this time, so she deserved his attention. ‘What did you want to talk to me about?’

Chloé looked away for a moment, mouthing something to herself. Her hands nervously fiddled with the bottom of her cardigan.

‘I… I’ll give her a chance.’

…

_What?_

Adrien blinked at her in confusion, parting his lips to reply, but she held up a hand to stop him.

‘I don’t like her,’ she continued, now sounding a little more like herself, ‘but I do like _you._ So I figured, if you like her, she can’t be _that_ bad.’

He let out a nervous laugh. ‘I’m… glad you think that.’

‘I don’t want to be friends with her. But I’ll tolerate her when you’re together.’

Adrien couldn’t help smiling. This was starting to sound less and less like a real sacrifice on Chloé’s part, but… Baby steps.

‘Thank you, Chloé. I really appreciate it.’ He held out his arms. ‘Hug?’

The way that her face transformed in that moment might have been hilarious if it hadn’t been for how honest-to-god _sincere_ that transformation was. Her face fell, tears forming in her eyes, and her lips trembled as she stepped forward into his embrace. As he hugged her to his chest, he almost thought he could hear her sob, but that must have just been his imagination.

‘I love you, Adrien,’ she murmured against his shirt.

He stroked her back. ‘I love you too, Chloé… as a friend.’

‘… I know.’

Chloé left through a backdoor after they’d said goodbye—probably because she didn’t want to face Marinette with obvious mascara streaks running down her cheeks. So when Adrien stepped out through the front door alone, Marinette frowned and peered behind him.

‘Did you kill her?’

‘Ha-ha. She went out the back.’

‘Figures,’ she murmured. ‘She still hates me, doesn’t she?’

Adrien considered his response for a moment. ‘… Yes, but she’s offered to accept your existence in my presence.’

‘Wow.’

‘I know.’ He pulled her to him and leaned down to peck her on the cheek. ‘Where to now, m’lady?’

She looked up at him with mischief in her eyes. ‘Meet me on my balcony after dark.’

‘What? I have to wait until it’s dark?’

‘Would you rather share our romantic kiss with the press?’

‘… On second thought, maybe I can wait.’

She winked. ‘Good kitty.’

* * *

Adrien leaned his elbows on the railing, gazing out at the glittering lights of night-time Paris. He’d seen it thousands of times before, even from the rooftops, but somehow, the view seemed totally different tonight.

_I can’t believe I’m standing in my superhero suit on Marinette’s balcony, waiting for Ladybug to show up so I can kiss her._ It was so surreal he couldn’t help but think that he must have imagined it. But no, the rose he twiddled between his fingers—left on a chair together with a short love note from Marinette—begged to differ.

She loved him.

He loved her.

It was simple, really. But the path they’d taken to get there… Well, they’d made some mistakes. Some B A D mistakes. It was nothing short of a miracle that they’d pulled themselves up from the abyss they’d dug themselves into.

Or maybe it was destiny.

If Plagg was there, he probably would’ve rolled his eyes and muttered, _“I told you so”_ , before floating away to search for cheese.

But if it _was_ truly destiny… Did that mean their love was self-evident? Did they really love each other at all?

He frowned at his own thoughts. _Stop it. You know how you feel about her. Does that feel fake?_ No. No, it certainly didn’t. It felt real and true and stable. In fact, it felt more real than anything in his life had ever felt before. So if this was destiny… He never wanted to have to stumble his way through undestined paths again.

He never wanted to be without Ladybug again.

He just barely heard a creak behind him before something small whipped past him in the air, followed by a red-clad superhero being pulled by her yo-yo.

‘Catch me,’ she challenged with a laugh.

_Oh, you’re on._

Without even having to think, he grabbed the baton from his belt, extended it and launched himself in Ladybug’s direction, feeling the night air whoosh past him. He dropped to the rooftop just as his partner jumped off again, zigzagging between chimneys as if she’d never done anything else. Adrien followed, enchanted by her beauty.

Was this destiny, too? Was he destined to always be one step behind her, always close but too far away to touch her, always trying to catch up?

He watched her movements and guessed which way she would go next, launching himself to the left instead of right ahead, and felt his lips pull into a smirk as she moved to the side a few seconds later. _I’ve got you now._

Extending his baton against the side of a chimney instead of against the roof, he catapulted himself forward in a speed even Ladybug couldn’t reach. As he passed above her, he spun in the air just in time to see the shocked look on her face. His feet came into contact with the roof and expertly worked against his momentum to slow to a stop, but Ladybug was still going top speed, and so she slammed into his chest with full force and pushed them both off the roof.

Adrien wasn’t worried for himself; he always landed on his feet. But Ladybug didn’t have the same powers, and so he reached for his staff again, just to be stopped by Ladybug’s slender fingers. She pitched her yo-yo in the direction of the nearest chimney, managed to get a grip, and pulled him with her to safety on the next rooftop.

Still, the momentum was too much even for her, and so they ended up slamming into the chimney in question, back first.

When they’d regained themselves, Ladybug huffed in pretence annoyance. ‘Do you _have_ to be so reckless all the time?’

‘Oh, come on,’ he smiled, ‘you’re just a sore loser.’

‘You’re right about the “sore” part, at least.’

Adrien leaned leisurely against the chimney, giving her his flirtiest smirk. ‘Want me to kiss it better, Bugaboo?’

She rolled her eyes, but he could see that she was smiling. ‘I’m starting to doubt that you and Adrien Agreste are really the same person.’

‘Oh, we’re the same, all right,’ he said, straightening out before sauntering up to her. He gazed down at her with the same sultry look he knew photographers loved, one hand carefully pressing against the stone above her head. ‘We both have the same needs.’

To his exhilaration, Ladybug blushed. ‘The same needs, huh? You mean the need to hunt mice and take naps 24/7?’

‘Who doesn’t love a good nap?’ he smiled, then leaned in closer. She parted her lips as their foreheads touched against each other. ‘But no, I’m talking about other needs.’ His gaze slipped down to her lips. ‘I vaguely remember something about a kiss on the rooftops.’

Ladybug bit her lip. _Damn her._ ‘What if I’ve changed my mind?’

He pulled away immediately. ‘Then you’ve changed your mind,’ he said, worrying he’d overstepped her boundaries.

Two hands shot out and grabbed his cheeks. A second later, her silk lips moved against his.

It always felt like he dropped everything as soon as their lips met. He dropped his worries. He dropped his guard. He dropped whatever he’d been thinking or doing in the moment before the kiss. Because nothing else was as vivid, as _real_ , as kissing Marinette.

But this was the first time he’d kissed Ladybug. And even though he knew that she was Marinette, even though he knew that she was the exact same person… it still felt exciting and new.

Ladybug wrapped her arms around his neck as their lips met, and then her legs followed suit around his hips. He reached down to support her thighs before pushing her back against the wall so that his hands could roam free over her curves. _So soft,_ he thought, _yet so hard._ He too was getting hard in a few select places—fondling your secret superhero girlfriend on a rooftop in the moonlight tended to do that—and when Ladybug wiggled slightly against him, he couldn’t help but moan out loud, his lips going slack.

‘Hush, kitty,’ she whispered, pressing an index finger against his mouth. ‘I wasn’t thinking of going public like this.’

‘You’re the one who said we should kiss on the rooftops,’ he reminded her, struggling to get his breathing in check.

She thought for a moment. ‘You’re right…’ With a wink, she pushed him away and landed on her own two feet. ‘What do you say to round two?’

He stared after her as she chucked her yo-yo again. _Whatever you say…_

It didn’t take long for him to realise where she was going, and as he did, his heart started galloping dangerously in his chest—and not just because he was jumping from rooftop to rooftop only with the help of an extendable metal rod.

She was leading him to his house.

‘Marinette,’ he said, both a question and a warning, when he reached her balancing outside his bedroom windows.

‘Are these locked?’ she asked, carefully touching along the frames in an attempt to open one of them.

Wondering whether it really was such a good idea, Adrien nonetheless reached out with one hand and tilted one of the windows opened—the same one he always left through when after dark.

Ladybug grinned. ‘After you.’

He sighed, but got in through the window and dropped to the floor, offering his hand to Ladybug as she climbed inside after him. She took it even though they both knew she didn’t need it. When she’d dropped down, he made sure to lock the window. _I’d prefer if we’re the only two superheroes breaking into my bedroom tonight…_

‘So this is what it’s like to be a rich kid, huh,’ she said as she let her gaze move across his extravagant room. ‘You really need a basketball hoop?’

‘It’s where I chuck Plagg if he gets too annoying. In other words, all the time.’

‘Uh-huh. And this climbing wall?’ she asked as she walked further into the room.

‘Well, maybe I used to need it, but it’s kinda lame compared to the real thing out there,’ he said, nodding back towards the windows.

Ladybug strolled over to his bed. ‘I’m almost a little disappointed that your bed is so normal.’

He followed her with nervous steps. ‘Almost?’

She sat down by the foot of the bed, carefully stroking the covers with one hand. ‘I mean… It’s your _bed._ ’ When she looked up at him, her bottom lip had slid beneath her teeth again. It popped out, and she finished, ‘How could I be disappointed in the thing that’s been fueling my dirtiest fantasies?’

His heart stopped. ‘I—um—’

‘In those fantasies, I never thought I’d be here with Chat Noir, though.’ She grinned.

Adrien froze. _Is she really… suggesting…?_

_Oh my god._

‘I mean… I c-could…’

‘Could what, _Chaton?_ Come closer, so I can hear you.’

He drifted towards the bed, wide-eyed and barely breathing, letting out a surprised yelp as she grabbed his wrist and pulled him to her into the bed. He landed on top of her, his hands pressed into the covers on either side of her head.

‘What is it that you say to de-transform, Chat?’ she whispered, her eyes glowing.

He inhaled sharply. ‘Claws in.’

Watching Ladybug’s face as he turned back into his ordinary self was like watching a four-year-old open her Christmas presents. The look on her face was part excited, part awe-struck, and when the green sparks had evaporated, it turned into mischief.

‘Hello there, gorgeous,’ she teased.

She pushed him off her and to the side so that he landed on his back, and then she stood on all four above him, grinning down at him in content. He felt his cheeks and neck burn.

‘Ah, um, h-hi?’

‘Someone told me you wanted a kiss. Is that correct?’

Adrien exhaled a trembling breath. ‘I mean, if you’re not busy or anything…’

She bit down a smile, then leaned down and pressed her lips against his neck. He closed his eyes. _How can this simple thing feel so amazing? How?_

He moaned as she worked her way downwards, trailing slow, sloppy kisses along his skin. Wanting to touch her, he reached up with his hands, but she stopped him. She intertwined her fingers with his, but then she pushed them down into the bed, locking him in place. He squirmed beneath her wet kisses, wondering how long he’d be able to keep it together. He was already burning up.

‘Stop posing, Adrien,’ she teased, ‘there are no cameras around.’

He leaned his head back, letting out a frustrated huff of breath as he tried to understand what she was talking about, but all he could focus on was her hot tongue against his collarbone, and she was devouring him, all of him, and he was so far gone that he barely even knew where he was.

‘Marinette,’ he moaned.

‘You’re doing it again,’ she complained. ‘It’s not fair.’

‘You feel so _good_ ,’ he breathed.

‘Keep your hands to yourself now.’

She let go of him and pulled his shirt over his head, then kissed him on the lips as she started unbuttoning his jeans.

‘Marinette…’

‘Mm?’

He dug his fingers into the sheets. ‘I want to undress you, too.’

She let out an uneven breath against his lips, and he almost thought she sounded nervous, but that couldn’t be—she was the brave one, wasn’t she?

‘It can never be about you, huh, _Chaton_?’ she whispered. ‘Fine. Spots off.’

As soon as she was Marinette again, his Marinette, he said _eff off_ to Ladybug’s rules and returned his hands to her body, tugging at her t-shirt. ‘Can I?’

She nodded, her lips leaving his for a moment to allow him to pull her t-shirt over her head.

It went crazy fast after that.

A pair of jeans dropped to the floor; then another one. Four socks were kicked off, a pair of panties was thrown god knows where and another pair of underwear disappeared without a trace beneath the covers. And then one of them remembered that they should use protection, and so Adrien rooted around in his bedside table until he found what he was looking for.

But when the condom was on, and they were lying side by side in the bed, breathing into each other, they both paused. They’d done this before, but never like this. Never like a couple.

‘I love you,’ he whispered. ‘You know that, right?’

She nodded solemnly. ‘I know.’

He found her hand and squeezed it. ‘It’s not too late to back down if you want to wait.’

She paused. ‘Do you want to wait?’

‘… No, not really,’ he admitted.

‘Me neither,’ she whispered.

She kissed him, and it was one of those slow, sloppy kisses that he loved so much, and that made him go wild with longing, and he couldn’t wait any longer. His right hand slipped in between her legs, and he carefully pushed one finger inside of her, almost bursting at the seams at the sound of her protracted moan. She gasped against his lips.

‘I want you,’ she said.

‘Oh god, I want you,’ he replied, his voice trembling.

‘Please, oh, please…’ She bucked her hips against his hand, moaning again as his finger went deeper.

Adrien’s head swam. Tugging at her bottom lip, he pulled his finger out and twisted beside her. Then he slowly pushed himself inside, biting back a moan at the soft, wet pleasure it gave him.

‘Fuck,’ he breathed.

‘Me,’ she completed.

He chuckled. ‘All right.’

He pulled back, and then in again, and then out, and he moved his fingers back down between her folds, but it was so hard to concentrate, so hard to focus, especially considering the downright lewd sounds she was making as he moved.

‘Adrien, oh god,’ she breathed, ‘shit. I’m—’

But whatever she was about to say, he didn’t hear the end of it, because her sentence turned into another long moan as she started to seize up, and he could feel her squeeze around him, making it even harder for him to keep himself at bay. And there was this sweet, short moment of complete, calm bliss… before he fell headfirst and spinning into a salacious, wet high that shook his body and made him lose his bearings for several seconds; the world and everything disappearing around him as his entire being emptied itself in a glorious finale.

When he returned to the living again, Marinette was panting into his collarbones, and he was completely spent, his arms trembling as he tried to squeeze her against him.

‘I love you so fucking much,’ he said.

She let out a trembling laugh. ‘I love you too, kitty.’

Despite himself, he sighed. ‘You know, it’s bothering me a little that you’re calling me that after what we just did.’

‘What?’ she giggled. ‘You _are_ my wittle kitty.’

‘Oh god,’ he groaned. ‘You’re a lost cause.’

‘At least I’m not a punning dork.’

‘I should have told a pun while you came. Wow, that would’ve sent you spiralling for real.’

‘I don’t know that anything could make that feel more amazing than it already did,’ she said, placing a soft kiss on his jaw. ‘How are you so good at this? Is it something all models have to learn in the business?’

‘Pfft! I’m not a porn actor, Mari.’

‘So what’s your secret?’

He sighed, rolling over on his back. ‘There’s no secret. I’m a guy in an industry dominated by girls.’

Marinette gave him a long look. ‘So…’

‘So they found sixteen-year-old me cute or whatever,’ he murmured. ‘There’s been the occasional fling.’

‘… And with the occasional fling, you mean heavy petting sessions?’

He grabbed a pillow and pressed it against his own face, shrieking into the soft fabric. _Why did I tell her? Oh my god, I’m such a loser. She’s probably freaked out about all of this._

‘Hey, Adrien,’ Marinette said softly, pulling the pillow away to grant him some oxygen. ‘I’m not weirded out or jealous or anything. Just curious.’

He looked anywhere but at her, and when he spoke again, his frustration shone through clearly in his own voice. ‘It’s really not as exciting as you may think. I kissed a few girls, and went further with two of them. Lots of weird fumbling and awkward mistakes. Nothing to write home about.’

She settled down by his side, snuggling close. ‘Will you tell me about them?’

Adrien raised his eyebrows. Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t that. ‘You really want to know?’

‘Of course I do,’ she said. ‘I want to know everything about you and what you’ve been through, both the amazing parts and the awkward stuff.’

He paused for a moment. What she said made sense. He wanted to know all about her too, even the embarrassing stories. Maybe _especially_ the embarrassing stories _._ But he was pretty sure he’d finally found a game she wouldn’t be able to beat him at.

‘Lots of the latter, not so much of the former,’ he assured her. Squeezing her shoulders, he then added, ‘Though I’m thinking that might be about to change.’

Marinette smiled softly. ‘I hope you’re right.’ She closed her eyes and let out a big yawn. ‘God, I’m tired…’

‘It’s okay,’ he murmured, stroking her hair, ‘I’m sure we’ll have lots of opportunities to freak each other out in the future.’

She cuddled her face into his neck, sending a pleasing tremble through his body. ‘I’m just gonna… take…’

Adrien waited for her to finish her sentence, but when he heard the first snore, he smiled and leaned his head against hers. He intertwined their fingers, closed his eyes and sighed in content.

‘Take as long as you need,’ he whispered. ‘I’ll be here when you wake up.’


End file.
